[FFmpeg-devel] [VOTE] Equality and leader team

[Alex Converse]

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 3:31 AM, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> Since the coup at the 18 jan 2011, we have a group of 7 who actively review,
> test and commit changes.
> Having more people review and test changes is a good thing, and we want that
> to continue.
> But this was not the only change, with the coup, final decission power as
> well as commit rights have been restricted to these 7 people as well.
> Locking all file maintainers out and in many cases (libmpeg2 reader removial,
> h264 encoder removial, ...) overriding file maintainer decissions.

There never was an h.264 encoder. There were a few functions that
might be useful to an h.264 encoder someday. It wasn't a work in
progress. It hadn't been touched in a meaningful way since 2006. We
actively discouraged people from working on it.

> Ronald, stated (see Subject: Re: [FFmpeg-devel] Compromise) that he does not
> even want 10 new commiters this year.
>
> It was said the new system is similar to the linux kernel, but really it has
> nothing to do with it. Linus and Andrew have not been locked out of the
> process by 7 of their friends and asked to send patches.
> Nor are file maintainers locked out of their repositories where they worked
> previously together.

I was never your friend. You were hostile to me from the first time I
ever sent an e-mail here.

> Linux development is if it can be described in one word, evolutional, its
> not forced by coups. And with disagreements and tools like git to which we
> just very recently switched also comes the natural and gradual change to a
> differnet development model of pulling changes and having more repositories.
> Trying to force such a change while at the same time trying to push oneself
> to the top of the pyramid is bound to lead to disaster in the long run.
>
> In terms of stability, the new 7 commiter team commited a whole mail thread
> by mistake
> <BBB> huh?
> <BBB> what happened
> <mru> you put the entire quoted thread in the commit message
>
> And broke compilation by apparently not bothering to test the code
> Subject: Re: [FFmpeg-devel] [FFmpeg-commits] wtv: filesystem implementation
>
> These are things that where very rare before when everyone had write access.
>

Are you kidding the build broke far more often under the old system.

> And to quote ronald on what happens if you disagree with him:
> "What happens if we disagree? I hope that we can come to a consensus.
> ?Plus of course all the usual, what if I break the build? Etc., but
> ?that's obvious. Yes I'm purposefully not going into the "what if we
> ?can't come to a consensus", because I don't want to start another
> ?bitchfight already."
>
> Because of all these, iam starting a simple vote that is targeted to fix the
> worst of it with the smallest change that appears to me sufficient.
> The worst is that many people leave ffmpeg entirely. And i myself would have
> done that too had i not been offered money for future work on ffmpeg.
>
>
> * Disband the leader team of 7 and return commit and decission power to all
> ?developers.
>
> Y Yes
> N No
>
> Id like to emphasize that Y returns the power to all developers NOT return
> any leader power to me.
> I also repeat that this is not about changing the system, this vote is just
> about removing an un-equality amongth the developers, it says nothing about
> which system developers would experiment with, change to or finally keep.
>

You can't stop a group of developers from having a shared tree with a
vote. You already have your tree that operates under your rules. If it
is a better system then surely your tree will gain more mindshare.

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