Re: Some thoughts about steerring commitee work

["Vladimir N. Makarov" <vmakarov at redhat dot com>]

Joe Buck wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 08:50:49AM -0400, Vladimir N. Makarov wrote:
>  
>
> > Looking at the last SC announcement, it is probably easy to get the
> > impression that SC is shrunk to David Edelsohn, may be Mark Mitchell
> > and Gerald Pfeifer.
> >    
>
> That would be a mistake.  Different SC members play different roles.  Many
> members play a role similar to outside members of boards of directors, and
> the intent is to represent users, not just developers.  For example, David
> Miller represents the interests of the Linux kernel, Joel Sherill
> represents embedded systems, Toon represents Fortran, etc.  David Edelsohn
> has been handling most of the announcements of decisions lately, but he is
> not personally appointing people; he's announcing the results of a vote.
>
>  
Thanks, for the clarification, Joe.  I always like to put users first.  
But I've just been thinking how some SC members which are not involed 
development make right decision during a vote about the appointments.

> > Some GCC developers don't follow all GCC
> > development and it would be nice to have an explanation even for
> > trivial cases of appointments.
> >    
>
> If you feel that someone should be appointed to some role, you can
> contact an SC member and it can be discussed.
>
>  
Sorry, it is even make me a bit scary becuase I don't know when the SC 
decides that we need more maintainers and what maintainers.  When should 
we propose.  After that I am just starting to think who usually propose 
them.

In this situation, in my humble opinion it is better to inform 
developers about doing such decision and ask them candidates.

I am agree with Richard that is a tricky political question.  In this 
case people could send candidates anonymously.

> > For example, about latest appointments of Diego and Ian as GWP.  They
> > are good guys but I don't see Diego actively working on RTL or Ian
> > actively working on tree-SSA.
> >    
>
> They were not granted unlimited GWP, but rather a limited form that
> we call "non-algorithmic".  See
>
> http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2006-11/msg00582.html
>
> for an explanation of what this means.  Ian can't mess with the guts
> of tree-SSA without approval from a maintainer in that area, for example.
> These kinds of things represent a judgment call.  In many cases the key
> factor is whether the person knows what he does not know, and when he
> needs to ask others for help.
>
>
>  
Please don't get me wrong, I am not against Ian or Diego.  I think a lot 
of people could do non-algorithmic GWP (altough another question do they 
want to).  I've just thinking about improving the decision making.

I am sorry, I feel like I am annoying, please just tell me about that 
and I will stop.

Vlad