Re: Re-thinking Debian membership - take #1: inactivity - status update
On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 04:37:54PM +0200, Sandro Tosi wrote:
That is the much more time-consuming than checking DDs. for our fellow
DDs we have several data sources (mls posts, uploads, key usage) to
track them, while we don't have anything similar for non-DDs. So
several manual researches are needed (either on lists.d.o, google, etc
etc).
So, while removing the easiest part (checking DDs) we are left with
the most difficult and time-consuming part.
Sure, but it seems an advantage nevertheless to me: we de facto ease
remove part of the task. Also, I fail to understand how things were
different with WAT runs. The relations of that with MIA seem identical
to me to the relations of the new proposal to MIA.
Ok, so there should be a communication of removed DDs, at least on
-private, so that DDs working on QA at least know it. if you/other
feel it unappropriate, please suggest some other form of
communication or ways to handle this. either in this proposal or at
a later stage.
I consider it totally appropriate. Probably -private would not be
enough though, and also some private QA channel would need to be
triggered. How it was for MIA? I presume we can use the same channel.
ACK. Again, I don't see MIA dying due to this proposal, I only
see it re-focusing his work on non-DD maintainers.
see above: this way our work is reduced in number, to focus on the
most annoying, difficult, quite frustrating and pointless (non-DDs
are not part of the project, in a strict sense (don't get me wrong
here, I know they are valuable contributors, but they can't vote,
blablabla)).
Understood. This proposal is no solution for that and I don't see an
easy one. Still, given the main utility of MIA has always been to
discover unmaintained *packages* by the main of MIA *developers*, I
feel like we still need that. How to improve it is a, recurrent,
totally different topic.
But I also have to be honest and affirm that we receive much less
requests for non-DDs than for DDs.
I don't have _the_ answer for that. What I can do, if you are
interested, is to hand over the list of potentially disabled DDs
to pinpoint your MIA queries at them and avoid/focus MIA
activities elsewhere.
Of course it would be welcome: I'll cross check the current TODO
list marking as 'pending on the proposal to be implemented'
accordingly.
OK. I'll contact you in private for further development on this side
of the issue.
contacted me on IRC. At the end of that
Yes, I contacted you, and I was quite surprised by this sudden
proposal. Probably I should have made clear at that time that a
contact would have been welcome.
My bad then, I could have understood that too. Sorry for the
misunderstanding, I hope things are clear(er) now.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Re-thinking Debian membership - take #1: inactivity - status update
On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 04:21:37PM +0200, Sandro Tosi wrote:
- what to do about the current (yet unanswered) queries we've
received? should we reply please wait for this to be approved?
should we fulfill? when should we stop operations? (I'm personally not
that motivated to work on something that's dying.)
There is no reason at all to change processing.
While I can see it can be still has its space for non-DDs (but it's
*much* more difficult our work for them) I don't see if it's still
worth have it once this proposal is implemented.
Just my 0.02€ on this. I think it is still totally worth (which is of
course a totally differ topic than saying that the current MIA team
has enough manpower for that). Lucas Nussbaum (Cc-ed) showed me some
interesting numbers about how many packages in the Debian archive are
currently maintained by non-DD-maintainers. They are quite a lot in
fact, and not only due to DM.
With that slices of the archive increasing, the reasons which brought
us to have MIA for DDs apply more and more to non-DD-maintainers.
You seem to misunderstand the proposal AFAICS. The MIA Team would
still be operative for non DDs in general and for DDs in a
proactive way (aka during the inactivity period).
but what is the point in proactively checks DDs if after time
decided by DAM they are removed from the project? we can simply
wait for that time to pass, or am I missing something?
I agree with you on this: I don't see the point in investing MIA
energy in DDs when this proposal will be implemented.
Still, the topic of packages de facto unmaintained by otherwise active
DDs (e.g. people that vote but don't fix/respond to RC bugs) remains a
big one. However, it is a totally orthogonal problem to MIA already.
also note that non-DDs checks are far more difficult to be performed
than for DDs, where we have plenty of data sources to check if
they're active or not. Keeping the infrastructure only of this
hard/rare/less-important (for the project) cases seems overkill to
me.
See above: I don't think it is in any way less important and is likely
to become more and more important in the future.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Re-thinking Debian membership - take #1: inactivity - status update
On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 07:29:20AM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
some questions I still see without a clear answer:
ACK on most answers from Luk, some more comments on some of them
below.
- what about non-DDs that are currently tracked in MIA database,
along with DDs?
Nothing changes regarding MIA.
Yes and no. My hope is that the implementation of this proposal would
significantly reduce the workload of MIA, letting that team work only
on non-DD maintainers.
- what will happen to the packages of DDs deactivated by this
proposal?
I consider this totally orthogonal to the proposal per se and hence I,
on purpose, avoided to raise the issue in the thread. See below.
Like with the WAT runs, there will very probably be a feedback to
the MIA Team.
Uhm, I would prefer having feedback from that to QA directly. MIA is
needed to discover missing-in-action people. With the implementation
of this proposal we will know, among DD ranks, who is MIA without
needing to chasing it any more. Hence the notification can, for this
specific case, bypass MIA. But sure, downstream the effects should be
the same as for packages of non-DD maintainers discovered to be MIA.
What to do with such notification is a (not new) topic for -qa, not
-project.
- will the MIA team be dismantled? who's in charge of this? will you
take care of removing all the traces of MIA team from Debian
documentations (like wiki, devref, etc) or from wherever is
referenced? (of course, if we decide to remove it and not archive)
or edit them, where needed?
You are mixing WAT and MIA apparently. The current proposal may replace
the DAM's WAT runs AFAICS, it does *not* affect MIA except from the
feedback generated after deactivation of DDs.
ACK. Again, I don't see MIA dying due to this proposal, I only see
it re-focusing his work on non-DD maintainers.
- what to do about the current (yet unanswered) queries we've
received? should we reply please wait for this to be approved?
should we fulfill? when should we stop operations? (I'm personally not
that motivated to work on something that's dying.)
There is no reason at all to change processing.
Still, the question of what should be done in the interim for DD
maintainers while the proposal actually gets implemented is a good
one. Here we have a trade-off: on one hand you don't want to invest a
lot of time in accounts that will be spotted more easily at the first
run of this proposal; on the other hand, if the proposal gets time to
get implemented (hey, here we're talking, but the burden of putting it
up to speed has been pushed to somebody else!) you don't want to loose
MIA-chasing abilities.
I don't have _the_ answer for that. What I can do, if you are
interested, is to hand over the list of potentially disabled DDs to
pinpoint your MIA queries at them and avoid/focus MIA activities
elsewhere.
discuss with) the MIA team about this proposal (since the team main
activities are under discussion here), either before or after your
made it public.
/me rolls eyeso_O
It is true that I did not contact the MIA team in the first place; I
do apologize for that, but at my defense I stress that I did not see,
as I do not see now, this proposal dismantling MIA. Nevertheless,
after my first message to -project some weeks ago you, as the only
active MIA team member AFAIK, contacted me on IRC. At the end of that
brief chat, my understanding was that we agreed upon seeing how the
proposal was going to be received on -project. I still do not see
which problem this proposal causes to MIA and MIA team.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Re-thinking Debian membership - take #1: inactivity - status update
Hi Stefano, On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 09:21, Stefano Zacchiroliz...@debian.org wrote: On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 07:29:20AM +0200, Luk Claes wrote: some questions I still see without a clear answer: ACK on most answers from Luk, some more comments on some of them below. - what about non-DDs that are currently tracked in MIA database, along with DDs? Nothing changes regarding MIA. Yes and no. My hope is that the implementation of this proposal would significantly reduce the workload of MIA, letting that team work only on non-DD maintainers. That is the much more time-consuming than checking DDs. for our fellow DDs we have several data sources (mls posts, uploads, key usage) to track them, while we don't have anything similar for non-DDs. So several manual researches are needed (either on lists.d.o, google, etc etc). So, while removing the easiest part (checking DDs) we are left with the most difficult and time-consuming part. - what will happen to the packages of DDs deactivated by this proposal? I consider this totally orthogonal to the proposal per se and hence I, on purpose, avoided to raise the issue in the thread. See below. Like with the WAT runs, there will very probably be a feedback to the MIA Team. Uhm, I would prefer having feedback from that to QA directly. MIA is needed to discover missing-in-action people. With the implementation of this proposal we will know, among DD ranks, who is MIA without needing to chasing it any more. Hence the notification can, for this specific case, bypass MIA. But sure, downstream the effects should be the same as for packages of non-DD maintainers discovered to be MIA. What to do with such notification is a (not new) topic for -qa, not -project. Ok, so there should be a communication of removed DDs, at least on -private, so that DDs working on QA at least know it. if you/other feel it unappropriate, please suggest some other form of communication or ways to handle this. either in this proposal or at a later stage. - will the MIA team be dismantled? who's in charge of this? will you take care of removing all the traces of MIA team from Debian documentations (like wiki, devref, etc) or from wherever is referenced? (of course, if we decide to remove it and not archive) or edit them, where needed? You are mixing WAT and MIA apparently. The current proposal may replace the DAM's WAT runs AFAICS, it does *not* affect MIA except from the feedback generated after deactivation of DDs. ACK. Again, I don't see MIA dying due to this proposal, I only see it re-focusing his work on non-DD maintainers. see above: this way our work is reduced in number, to focus on the most annoying, difficult, quite frustrating and pointless (non-DDs are not part of the project, in a strict sense (don't get me wrong here, I know they are valuable contributors, but they can't vote, blablabla)). But I also have to be honest and affirm that we receive much less requests for non-DDs than for DDs. - what to do about the current (yet unanswered) queries we've received? should we reply please wait for this to be approved? should we fulfill? when should we stop operations? (I'm personally not that motivated to work on something that's dying.) There is no reason at all to change processing. Still, the question of what should be done in the interim for DD maintainers while the proposal actually gets implemented is a good one. Here we have a trade-off: on one hand you don't want to invest a lot of time in accounts that will be spotted more easily at the first run of this proposal; on the other hand, if the proposal gets time to get implemented (hey, here we're talking, but the burden of putting it up to speed has been pushed to somebody else!) you don't want to loose MIA-chasing abilities. I don't have _the_ answer for that. What I can do, if you are interested, is to hand over the list of potentially disabled DDs to pinpoint your MIA queries at them and avoid/focus MIA activities elsewhere. Of course it would be welcome: I'll cross check the current TODO list marking as 'pending on the proposal to be implemented' accordingly. discuss with) the MIA team about this proposal (since the team main activities are under discussion here), either before or after your made it public. /me rolls eyeso_O It is true that I did not contact the MIA team in the first place; I do apologize for that, but at my defense I stress that I did not see, as I do not see now, this proposal dismantling MIA. Nevertheless, after my first message to -project some weeks ago you, as the only active MIA team member AFAIK, Well, I might be the most active, not the only one. contacted me on IRC. At the end of that Yes, I contacted you, and I was quite surprised by this sudden proposal. Probably I should have made clear at that time that a contact would have been welcome. brief chat, my understanding was that we agreed upon seeing how
Re-thinking Debian membership - take #1: inactivity - status update
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 06:03:41PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
This proposal received a lot of interest back then, but in the end
went nowhere. I think we should resurrect it and put into use at
least some of its parts. In particular, the part about expiration
of DD rights received only minor criticisms; criticisms which I've
tried to address.
Here is a status update.
My reading of the discussion which followed the initial proposal is
that we have consensus on the general idea; yet, there are small
divergences on some details (e.g., 1 year vs 2 year, when/if
notifying, ...).
Since, AFAIR, DAM has not commented in the thread, in the last days I
contacted a DAM representative (Joerg Jaspert) in private to seek
comments on the idea. The bottom line is that DAM is fine with the
proposed changes and is willing to replace (manual) WAT runs [2] with
an automatic mechanism like the one we discussed. I also pinged DSA,
which reasonably considers this discussion none of its business and
will happily implement whatever the project and DAM decide on the
matter.
According to constitution and delegation, DAM is already fully
empowered to implement the proposed changes and also has the freedom
to decide upon the details. Hence, I personally don't think we need a
vote on this issue. Once ready, DAM can announce the change via the
usual channels, possibly referencing the thread at [1] as evidence of
discussion of the issue within the project.
Of course, if some of us is in utter disagreement with the proposal
(or with the forthcoming implementation), she has the usual right to
call for a vote on a more specific proposal. Since I'm happy with the
current/forthcoming state of affairs, I will not do that.
Cheers.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2009/07/msg00067.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2007/07/msg4.html
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Re-thinking Debian membership - take #1: inactivity - status update
On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 11:56, Stefano Zacchiroliz...@debian.org wrote: On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 06:03:41PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: This proposal received a lot of interest back then, but in the end went nowhere. I think we should resurrect it and put into use at least some of its parts. In particular, the part about expiration of DD rights received only minor criticisms; criticisms which I've tried to address. Here is a status update. My reading of the discussion which followed the initial proposal is that we have consensus on the general idea; yet, there are small divergences on some details (e.g., 1 year vs 2 year, when/if notifying, ...). some questions I still see without a clear answer: - who will decide the above (and below) details? are they left to the implementors? I believe the proposal should contains some sort of lower limits (what if they decide 1 month of inactivity is enough? ok it's purely hypotetical, but it still applies). - what's your ETA for this proposal to be operative? - what about non-DDs that are currently tracked in MIA database, along with DDs? - what will happen to the packages of DDs deactivated by this proposal? - will the MIA team be dismantled? who's in charge of this? will you take care of removing all the traces of MIA team from Debian documentations (like wiki, devref, etc) or from wherever is referenced? (of course, if we decide to remove it and not archive) or edit them, where needed? - what to do about the current (yet unanswered) queries we've received? should we reply please wait for this to be approved? should we fulfill? when should we stop operations? (I'm personally not that motivated to work on something that's dying.) Since, AFAIR, DAM has not commented in the thread, in the last days I contacted a DAM representative (Joerg Jaspert) in private to seek comments on the idea. The bottom line is that DAM is fine with the proposed changes and is willing to replace (manual) WAT runs [2] with an automatic mechanism like the one we discussed. I also pinged DSA, which reasonably considers this discussion none of its business and will happily implement whatever the project and DAM decide on the matter. I do believe it would have been nice if you contacted (not saying discuss with) the MIA team about this proposal (since the team main activities are under discussion here), either before or after your made it public. According to constitution and delegation, DAM is already fully empowered to implement the proposed changes and also has the freedom to decide upon the details. Hence, I personally don't think we need a vote on this issue. Once ready, DAM can announce the change via the usual channels, possibly referencing the thread at [1] as evidence of discussion of the issue within the project. Of course, if some of us is in utter disagreement with the proposal (or with the forthcoming implementation), she has the usual right to call for a vote on a more specific proposal. Since I'm happy with the current/forthcoming state of affairs, I will not do that. ok, I'm kinda agnostic about it, so I just sit and wait to see what will happen. Regards, -- Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu) My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/ Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Re-thinking Debian membership - take #1: inactivity - status update
Sandro Tosi wrote: On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 11:56, Stefano Zacchiroliz...@debian.org wrote: On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 06:03:41PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: This proposal received a lot of interest back then, but in the end went nowhere. I think we should resurrect it and put into use at least some of its parts. In particular, the part about expiration of DD rights received only minor criticisms; criticisms which I've tried to address. Here is a status update. My reading of the discussion which followed the initial proposal is that we have consensus on the general idea; yet, there are small divergences on some details (e.g., 1 year vs 2 year, when/if notifying, ...). some questions I still see without a clear answer: - who will decide the above (and below) details? are they left to the implementors? I believe the proposal should contains some sort of lower limits (what if they decide 1 month of inactivity is enough? ok it's purely hypotetical, but it still applies). DAM. Well, when DAM would decide too restrictive, one could try to convince them to do otherwise or even overrule them. - what's your ETA for this proposal to be operative? That's up to DAM. - what about non-DDs that are currently tracked in MIA database, along with DDs? Nothing changes regarding MIA. - what will happen to the packages of DDs deactivated by this proposal? Like with the WAT runs, there will very probably be a feedback to the MIA Team. - will the MIA team be dismantled? who's in charge of this? will you take care of removing all the traces of MIA team from Debian documentations (like wiki, devref, etc) or from wherever is referenced? (of course, if we decide to remove it and not archive) or edit them, where needed? You are mixing WAT and MIA apparently. The current proposal may replace the DAM's WAT runs AFAICS, it does *not* affect MIA except from the feedback generated after deactivation of DDs. - what to do about the current (yet unanswered) queries we've received? should we reply please wait for this to be approved? should we fulfill? when should we stop operations? (I'm personally not that motivated to work on something that's dying.) There is no reason at all to change processing. Since, AFAIR, DAM has not commented in the thread, in the last days I contacted a DAM representative (Joerg Jaspert) in private to seek comments on the idea. The bottom line is that DAM is fine with the proposed changes and is willing to replace (manual) WAT runs [2] with an automatic mechanism like the one we discussed. I also pinged DSA, which reasonably considers this discussion none of its business and will happily implement whatever the project and DAM decide on the matter. I do believe it would have been nice if you contacted (not saying discuss with) the MIA team about this proposal (since the team main activities are under discussion here), either before or after your made it public. You seem to misunderstand the proposal AFAICS. The MIA Team would still be operative for non DDs in general and for DDs in a proactive way (aka during the inactivity period). Cheers Luk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
