Date: Wed, 05 Feb 2003 01:09:59 +0000 From: Andrew Boothman <andrew@cream.org> To: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: dillon@'s commit bit: I object Message-ID: <3E406467.8020500@cream.org> In-Reply-To: <200302041944.h14JiSaX076743@grimreaper.grondar.org> References: <200302041944.h14JiSaX076743@grimreaper.grondar.org>
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Mark Murray wrote: >>One thing i want to make clear though, the idea of core is something i >>would never advocate even thinking of abandoning. I just dont think >>that because i dont have a commit bit and am not a developer that i am >>less valuable. >> >> > >Certainly, value is a perception. Folks who contribute are _very_ >valuable, as it it our contribution-base that gives our most direct >exposure to our user-base. Advocacy, bug reports, anything. > Here is the problem as I see it. Having personally never seen any side of Matt other than hearing him help to debug problems or talking about his latest changes to the VM or other subsystems, it's hard for me to understand what he has done wrong. And I don't think I'm the only one in that situation. However, I do respect the opinions of -core and other developers who are much more deeply involved in FreeBSD than I am. I certainly do not believe that -core would have taken this action without good reason. The problem is that despite Mark and various other folks telling the user-base how important we are to the project, we have not been credited with an explanation about what happened. What seems incredulous to me is that the first we heard anything about this was when it was pointed out by our friendly local troll (who I'm personally starting to become rather fond of). Perhaps -core believes this is a private problem that shouldn't be discussed in public (doing our laundry in public), but that kind of secracy always leads to the sort of reaction we've seen in -chat in the past few days. When something happens that people perceive to have effected them negatively, and they are offered no explanation, the natural reaction is to question the legitamacy of the leadership. People need information in order for them to rationalise what is happening. Readers of -developers (which as I understand it are the committers) will have known what was going on but no-one else had any idea. It seems to me that if -core was unanimous in deciding to remove Matt's commit bit then they should have been unanimous behind a joint statement that explains what happened. If they couldn't be specific about any examples of his behaviour then a general description would have sufficed. The lack of statement from -core and the general secracy that surrounds the -developers list is what I see as the problems here. I think Matt Dillon made major contributions, it saddens me to see him leave and I sincerely want to see him return to the project as a team-player and as a contributor. But I also believe that the project is bigger than one man. Major community-effecting decisions should, at the very least, be communicated to the community. Period. Andrew. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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