Re: [Guile-devel-internal] Internal developer list

[Mikael Djurfeldt]

Mark Galassi <address@hidden> writes:

>     Mikael> This is an inofficial list intended for the Guile
>     Mikael> developers to discuss things privately.
> 
> When Jim first started this list's ancestor way back some people took
> umbrage because it was private, and one guy stopped contributing (I
> think he over-reacted).
> 
> So we assured people that the list was not to keep the Guile design
> process secret, but rather it was to coordinate boring and practical
> things, like CVS repository issues.  In fact, the list is isomorphic
> to the list of people who have CVS write access.
> 
> Gang-of-four: do you still mean it that way?

Here is my fourth of gang-of-four position:

I think the way things have worked recently has been good with regard
to the level of publicity.  We have been doing a lot of detailed
discussion about design on address@hidden  This,
however, scared people off the list, so lately, we might have been
doing some discussion on devel-guile in order to reduce the volume.

Now this problem has been solved by the introduction of guile-devel.
This is where we again will be doing most of the design discussion.
So, I don't think this is a big problem.

But, given several years of experience of Guile development, the
experiment of moving most of the design discussion to a public list
has shown that it really *is* a pain in the ass in some
circumstances.  A small innocent mentioning of a small detail, where
it's obvious what way to go for the initiated, can blow up to a long
bothersome discussion.  Sometimes, we need to avoid that in order to
be efficient.  But mostly, it is an advantage that things go on
publicly, so that people with different experience and perspectives
can detect problems or come with good ideas.

So, I support developing Guile on the public guile-devel list, while I
still demand the right to have a private forum for some things.  We
will try not to abuse this resource.


I'd also like to add something which is not personal opinion, but
rather a fact: The GNU project has a hierarchical organization.

* RMS is the boss.

* The maintainers report to RMS.

* It is the maintainers, not the list, who make decisions.


We have recently got criticism for letting some debates go on too long
without making decisions.  People have asked for a stronger
leadership.

I tend to agree with the criticism.

The hierarchical organization is there because it is healthy for the
project.  This is the view from the other direction.

We would like to be as open as possible and take into account what
people want from Guile as much as possible.  Therefore, again, we
*will* develop Guile on the public list.

We also would like to make good decisions.  Being four maintainers
helps this a lot.  But bringing in the developers in the "internal"
decision-making helps even more.  guile-devel-internal can be viewed
as an instrument for this.

I think no-one would argue that Guile would be better off without a
decision-making authority.  Having an entire spectrum of levels: rms,
gang-of-four, developers, list participants, where we try to push
things downward in the hierarchy, gives the project a kind of
flexibility that is much nicer for everybody than just having two
levels of authority.  I believe this organization makes it possible
for more people to participate to a greater extent in the decision
making.