Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
> "Didier" == Didier 'OdyX' Raboud writes: Didier> Given the situation (an unresponsive Daniel, a proposal from Didier> people with powers to push the situation forward), I'd be Didier> more inclined to say yes to Christian, without a formal Didier> resolution. Given that Christian has asked for additional support before moving forward, I'd prefer to give him that. I think the resolution should be non-binding. Something along the lines of We observed this fact. Christian asked for input on whether this would be a good way forward. The TC believes it would be. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
Hi all, Tollef, thank you for having pushed this topic, we're heading towards a solution it seems. Sorry to have taken so long to answer… Le mercredi, 15 avril 2015, 20.13:44 Tollef Fog Heen a écrit : > >> Quoting Axel Beckert (a...@debian.org): > >> > In the long run I'd like to see even more people working on > >> > Aptitude. > >> > > >> > But for that, a possessive lead developer or power games are > >> > quite > >> > hindering. IMHO one of the reasons Aptitude's development stalled > >> > again are those power games we've seen. So I'd prefer a solution > >> > where people who want to do stuff are also able to do it -- > >> > without getting harassed by other people involved. > >> > >> So do I. And I still have admin rights on aptitude on Alioth. Even > >> though I'm not that much active in aptitude's development. > >> > >> Here's my proposal: > >> > >> - restore Manuel's commit rights > >> - have both me and Axel watch the aptitude-devel mailing list, not > >> to judge the technical validity of changes, but more following the > >> social aspects > >> - and see what happens... > >> > >> It can't indeed be worse than the current situation anyway. > > > >I see where the proposal is coming from, but I'd like to ask you to > >hold off on it a little bit. I've mailed Daniel and asked him to > >comment on the bug, so hopefully we can have his input soon and get > >this resolved. > > > >(Of course, if Daniel's happy with that approach, and Manuel is too, > >then I don't think anybody would have a problem with it.) > > Daniel has not responded to the bug at all within the two weeks (and a > few days) I asked him to, so I see no point in waiting further with > moving forward here. > > My suggestion is basically to say yes to Manuel: Make him the > maintainer of aptitude and ask the Alioth admins to reinstate him as > an admin, removing Daniel. Given the situation (an unresponsive Daniel, a proposal from people with powers to push the situation forward), I'd be more inclined to say yes to Christian, without a formal resolution. Given that we could not hear from Daniel (as of now), I think we're much now more in a typical "MIA" situation rather than in a "conflict resolution" situation. In this situation, I'd rather apply normal procedures than our "formal resolution" one: people who are admin on Alioth take it from there and apply their best judgment for the project's success, acknowledging Daniel's MIA status on aptitude's front. > (…) I'm not sure stating that in a formal resolution is going to make > the world a better place either. I think the net result would be perceived as a blame of Daniel, judging his past actions, while we could not hear his side of the story. I'm not overly comfortable with this. Cheers, OdyX signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
]] Sam Hartman > A major advantage of this approach is that it can happen from within the > aptitude project. Christian has the technical authority to implement > this. He's asked for review of the social authority, but we could > support this way of the aptitude project reorganizing itself without > needing to override a maintainer or exclude daniel from making technical > contributions if he reappears. Nothing in my proposal would exclude Daniel from making technical contributions though. I'm happy enough to accept your suggested solution too, the practical end result is pretty much the same. The message we send might not be the entirely the same, but I'd rather get it unblocked than have «my» solution be preferred. -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
Hi all, 2015-03-29 21:19 Tollef Fog Heen: >]] Christian PERRIER > >Hi bubulle! > >> Quoting Axel Beckert (a...@debian.org): >> >> > In the long run I'd like to see even more people working on Aptitude. >> > >> > But for that, a possessive lead developer or power games are quite >> > hindering. IMHO one of the reasons Aptitude's development stalled >> > again are those power games we've seen. So I'd prefer a solution where >> > people who want to do stuff are also able to do it -- without getting >> > harassed by other people involved. >> >> >> So do I. And I still have admin rights on aptitude on Alioth. Even >> though I'm not that much active in aptitude's development. >> >> Here's my proposal: >> >> - restore Manuel's commit rights >> - have both me and Axel watch the aptitude-devel mailing list, not to >> judge the technical validity of changes, but more following the >> social aspects >> - and see what happens... >> >> It can't indeed be worse than the current situation anyway. > >I see where the proposal is coming from, but I'd like to ask you to hold >off on it a little bit. I've mailed Daniel and asked him to comment on >the bug, so hopefully we can have his input soon and get this resolved. > >(Of course, if Daniel's happy with that approach, and Manuel is too, >then I don't think anybody would have a problem with it.) Daniel has not responded to the bug at all within the two weeks (and a few days) I asked him to, so I see no point in waiting further with moving forward here. My suggestion is basically to say yes to Manuel: Make him the maintainer of aptitude and ask the Alioth admins to reinstate him as an admin, removing Daniel. Manuel is clearly interested in working on aptitude and seems to be interested in having other people contribute as well. Given aptitude currently has a lot of bugs and is an important package in the Debian ecosystem, I'd like to move forward on this fairly soon. I'm unsure to what, if any, extent we should comment on the social conflict here. I don't think it's productive for people to remove others from projects unless they're actively harmful or MIA, but on the other hand, I'm not sure stating that in a formal resolution is going to make the world a better place either. We'll need a formal resolution text and such, but are anybody opposed to what I'm suggesting above, before we start on the wordsmithing? -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
2015-03-29 21:19 Tollef Fog Heen: ]] Christian PERRIER Hi bubulle! Quoting Axel Beckert (a...@debian.org): > In the long run I'd like to see even more people working on Aptitude. > > But for that, a possessive lead developer or power games are quite > hindering. IMHO one of the reasons Aptitude's development stalled > again are those power games we've seen. So I'd prefer a solution where > people who want to do stuff are also able to do it -- without getting > harassed by other people involved. So do I. And I still have admin rights on aptitude on Alioth. Even though I'm not that much active in aptitude's development. Here's my proposal: - restore Manuel's commit rights - have both me and Axel watch the aptitude-devel mailing list, not to judge the technical validity of changes, but more following the social aspects - and see what happens... It can't indeed be worse than the current situation anyway. I see where the proposal is coming from, but I'd like to ask you to hold off on it a little bit. I've mailed Daniel and asked him to comment on the bug, so hopefully we can have his input soon and get this resolved. (Of course, if Daniel's happy with that approach, and Manuel is too, then I don't think anybody would have a problem with it.) The proposal of Christian could have been implemented 1 year ago, long before I thought about submitting the issue to the CTTE. When Daniel Hartwig removed permissions from me to commit, against the opinion of the few people that cared to voice it, Axel and Christian refused to do this (they were informed, and they are both admins of the project so they had the power to do it). And indeed, in my original request I left open the possibility of keeping Daniel Hartwig as an admin: "Keeping him as member and contributing is completely fine for me; admin is also fine as long as somebody takes the responsibility for acting *immediately* if he starts doing the same things again (with me or somebody else). I also think that it would be good if other people also contributed to this important project." But this was only if somebody took the responsibility for *immediately* reverting actions resulting from abusive behaviour as maintainer, should it happen again. 10 months later without anybody doing anything about it, even when Hartwig is MIA for many months, I do not consider this a good solution now. So my request to the committee, independently of if I am going to get permissions to commit again, is that Daniel Hartwig is removed as admin of the aptitude project in Alioth, and question if he should be consider a maintainer at all or if the package should be put out to adoption, for the reasons stated in the original email and repeated below (now additionally with almost 10 months being inactive/MIA since my request): a) Technical a.1) Daniel Burrows is the founder and only person who can say "this project is mine". Neither Daniel Hartwig nor anybody around these days (including me) has been an historical maintainer of the package (perhaps Christian, but only the i18n part, AFAIK). a.2) Daniel Hartwig arrived around Nov 2011, same as me (months after Daniel Burrows left). In practical terms, both about the "upstream" part and the package maintainance, Hartwig has been developing and actively maintaining aptitude only for less than a year -- mostly in 2011-2012, and only during a brief period of 2014 reacting to my return to the activity. 2013 was a barren year for development, bugs not addressed, and the package was NMUed for months without reaction. Daniel Hartwig only released one version "recently", in June 2014, his previous one was in 2012-11-07. With the little that I did in a few weeks of 2014 (until kicked), I did about as much as Hartwig in 2013+2014 together, and triaged/closed more bugs. I released 4 versions in early 2014, with numerous but small fixes -- that was the plan to try to reduce the humongous number of bugs, and Axel approved. In summary, in practical terms Hartwig has been neglecting both the upstream part and the package maintainance during most of the time that he's been listed as uploader/maintainer. a.3) I do not claim to be a decisive developer of aptitude, and I don't want to be the only one taking decisions, or the sole/main admin or maintainer. But precisely because of that, I do not think that somebody with as little history and dedication in the project (both aptitude and Debian) as Hartwig should put himself in a position of gatekeeper of what goes into the project when somebody steps up after months/years of abandon, without giving any explanation, and only to disappear again when the sparks of new development are extinguished again. As a member of Debian, I believe that Hartwig's behaviour since 2012 has been harmful, and should not be allowed to repeat these actions if anybody with i
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
Quoting Tollef Fog Heen (tfh...@err.no): > > It can't indeed be worse than the current situation anyway. > > I see where the proposal is coming from, but I'd like to ask you to hold > off on it a little bit. I've mailed Daniel and asked him to comment on > the bug, so hopefully we can have his input soon and get this resolved. No problem. I was indeed waiting to see comments to my proposal without doing anything, anyway. I'll follow the issue as well to see where it goes and help where I can. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
]] Christian PERRIER Hi bubulle! > Quoting Axel Beckert (a...@debian.org): > > > In the long run I'd like to see even more people working on Aptitude. > > > > But for that, a possessive lead developer or power games are quite > > hindering. IMHO one of the reasons Aptitude's development stalled > > again are those power games we've seen. So I'd prefer a solution where > > people who want to do stuff are also able to do it -- without getting > > harassed by other people involved. > > > So do I. And I still have admin rights on aptitude on Alioth. Even > though I'm not that much active in aptitude's development. > > Here's my proposal: > > - restore Manuel's commit rights > - have both me and Axel watch the aptitude-devel mailing list, not to > judge the technical validity of changes, but more following the > social aspects > - and see what happens... > > It can't indeed be worse than the current situation anyway. I see where the proposal is coming from, but I'd like to ask you to hold off on it a little bit. I've mailed Daniel and asked him to comment on the bug, so hopefully we can have his input soon and get this resolved. (Of course, if Daniel's happy with that approach, and Manuel is too, then I don't think anybody would have a problem with it.) -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
(Dropping a bunch of addresses, I believe that those that I removed are subscribed to the bug report, the mailing list, MIA or not interested). Hello, 2015-03-27 21:29 GMT+00:00 Don Armstrong : > On Fri, 27 Mar 2015, Javier Barroso wrote: >> Sincerely I would expect this bug to be solved in less than a year. It >> has to been frustrating to be at Manuel circunstances. I know CTTE has >> been very very very busy , I'm understand this is not the biggest >> issue, but 8 month of not activities on git should be sufficient to >> give the power to Manuel and tell to Daniel to have a collaborative >> aptitude > > The CTTE certainly has not been very active on this issue. That's > definitely our problem, but as near as I can tell, none of the parties > have been very active either. I didn't want to insist on this in the mailing list or IRC meetings because of all of the discussions about systemd and so on -- they were more important, and all what happened kept the committee very busy for months. And after that because of the burnt-out of people and other urgent questions for the freeze. In the meantime, I was doing other more interesting and rewarding things in Debian anyway... if nobody cared about aptitude enough to keep an active development, so be it. Overall I was not very active in aptitude after that, yes, I sent only a few e-mails since then (in Oct/Nov) to the mailing list to reply to some security questions of some user, possibly affecting apt (or similar reports at the time in apt's mailing list); and others discussing a bit with the apt team (David) about API/ABI breakages that would affect aptitude. If with not being active you mean that I have not been active at all in the development of aptitude, other people already explained that it was because I was effectively expelled from the development group (== no commit rights). The only thing that I can do is to send e-mails to the mailing lists or bug reports, but why to reply to bugs if I cannot fix anything in the repository, my contributions are blocked, and otherwise there is nobody integrating the patches proposed by other people for months or years? I could have created a fork, or could have uploaded a new revision package setting the repository to collab-maint, but I thought that doing those kind of things would only create more confusion for aptitude/Debian users and would not have helped the situation in general. > Currently unresolved questions from me are the following: > > 1) Is there still a conflict here? What precisely is it? > > 2) What would a resolution of this conflict look like to the parties? The reply to both questions above is in my original request, specially in the 4 paragraphs towards the end, between "Over the history of the projects [...]" and "[...] to start with". I think that all what I explained in the original request to the committee applies now, because nothing changed, the last year only added up in the same pattern. I was expelled more than 1 year ago, and sent the request to the committee 10 months ago, but the development ceased again since then, mirroring what had happened in previous years/cycles. A quick glance to the development log [1] in 2013-2015 should explain quite clearly the status of the project. (The commits in early January authored by other people were added by me, picking from patches in BTS or development branches -- it does not mean that those people were active at that time). [1] http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/aptitude/aptitude.git/log/ The request to the CTTE was sent after consulting in private with several people who know better about the procedures than I do, so I think that it will be useful to come to a clear decision, and would also be useful for similar cases that could arise around central tools of the project in the future. Cheers. -- Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
Quoting Axel Beckert (a...@debian.org): > In the long run I'd like to see even more people working on Aptitude. > > But for that, a possessive lead developer or power games are quite > hindering. IMHO one of the reasons Aptitude's development stalled > again are those power games we've seen. So I'd prefer a solution where > people who want to do stuff are also able to do it -- without getting > harassed by other people involved. So do I. And I still have admin rights on aptitude on Alioth. Even though I'm not that much active in aptitude's development. Here's my proposal: - restore Manuel's commit rights - have both me and Axel watch the aptitude-devel mailing list, not to judge the technical validity of changes, but more following the social aspects - and see what happens... It can't indeed be worse than the current situation anyway. It can be done without "blessing" of the CTTE : after all, I'm admin of the project, this was indeed granted to me by Daniel Burrows, the original aptitude developerprecisely because he feared that him becomign MIA would be an issue. And *I* am the one who granted Daniel Hartwig admin rights *because* he was doing a very useful work to keep aptitude development going on. So, indeed, I think I'm legitimate enough to decide what is best. Still, an advice from the CTTE wouldn't hurt. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
Hi, [In the following "Daniel" always refers to Daniel Hartwig, not to Daniel Burrows. Daniel Burrows is no more involved in Aptitude's development for quite a while. He's of course still welcome to continue to contribute to Aptitude, at least from my point of view.] Don Armstrong wrote: > On Fri, 27 Mar 2015, Javier Barroso wrote: > > Sincerely I would expect this bug to be solved in less than a year. It > > has to been frustrating to be at Manuel circunstances. I know CTTE has > > been very very very busy , I'm understand this is not the biggest > > issue, but 8 month of not activities on git should be sufficient to > > give the power to Manuel and tell to Daniel to have a collaborative > > aptitude > > The CTTE certainly has not been very active on this issue. That's > definitely our problem, but as near as I can tell, none of the parties > have been very active either. No wonder. Daniel has kicked Manuel out of the Alioth project (at least revoked his commit access), so Manuel can't really do any coding work on Aptitude. I must say that I'm not happy at all about this (IMHO anything else but kind) move. Daniel might argue that this was necessary, but I disagree. > Currently unresolved questions from me are the following: > > 1) Is there still a conflict here? I fear so. I'd be happy to see Manuel back working on Aptitude, since I haven't seen any commit or mail from Daniel in like 9 months or so. But since Daniel kicked him out... Actually, I'd like to see _both_ working on Aptitude again as they approached mostly different sets of issues. Daniel mostly seemed to work on a few bigger issues while Manuel fixed a lot of smaller, but partially quite annoying issues. > 2) What would a resolution of this conflict look like to the parties? One thing which came to my mind was to revoke Alioth Project Admin privileges from any of the conflicting parties to avoid such power games in the future. But then again, I didn't want to become part of those power games I'd like to get rid of. OTOH, if Daniel continues to be as MIA as he looked like in the past year, we need a new Aptitude maintainer anyways. So it seems obvious to me to put Manuel back in charge if he still wants to work on Aptitude. A good date for making such a cut seems to be the start of the Stretch release cycle, i.e. directly after the Jessie release. Not having to take this decision on my own (for the reasons outlined above), but having multiple other developers (e.g. the Tech CTTE) backing an decision (whichever it will be) would be helpful, because I really do not want to come under fire from any of the two parties. I also suggested to use feature branches and reviewing them on the mailing list before merging to not get in conflict during coding. But despite some agreeing e-mails, this seemed to be of no avail. > FWICT, it looks like Axel is also working on aptitude development; Nope, not on development. I'm just doing bug triage and other administrative stuff like caring about https://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/. Doing C++ development is not what I'm good at. (One of the reasons why I'm listed in Uploaders.) You can count on me to continue doing Aptitude bug triage, sponsoring Aptitude uploads, testing Aptitude releases, administrating the Aptitude project on Alioth, maybe even do commits with regards to packaging, documentation and typos. I'm a heavy Aptitude user and I don't want to see it die, so that's how I try to contribute as I can't do the C++ coding. > what is his opinion of this issue? At some point I had given up to get Daniel and Manuel working together without attacking or provoking each other. But in some way, that's still what I would like to see. In the long run I'd like to see even more people working on Aptitude. But for that, a possessive lead developer or power games are quite hindering. IMHO one of the reasons Aptitude's development stalled again are those power games we've seen. So I'd prefer a solution where people who want to do stuff are also able to do it -- without getting harassed by other people involved. Regards, Axel -- ,''`. | Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/ : :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin `. `' | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5 `-| 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#750135: Status of #750135 (Maintainer of aptitude package)
On Fri, 27 Mar 2015, Javier Barroso wrote: > Sincerely I would expect this bug to be solved in less than a year. It > has to been frustrating to be at Manuel circunstances. I know CTTE has > been very very very busy , I'm understand this is not the biggest > issue, but 8 month of not activities on git should be sufficient to > give the power to Manuel and tell to Daniel to have a collaborative > aptitude The CTTE certainly has not been very active on this issue. That's definitely our problem, but as near as I can tell, none of the parties have been very active either. Currently unresolved questions from me are the following: 1) Is there still a conflict here? What precisely is it? 2) What would a resolution of this conflict look like to the parties? FWICT, it looks like Axel is also working on aptitude development; what is his opinion of this issue? -- Don Armstrong http://www.donarmstrong.com It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -- Frederick Douglass -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
