Re: ECPG bug fix: DECALRE STATEMENT and DEALLOCATE, DESCRIBE

On Mon, Aug 9, 2021 at 10:38:07PM +0200, Michael Meskes wrote:
> > Clearly we disagree about this. I don't think that there is anything
> > to be gained from discussing this any further, though. I suggest that
> > we leave it at that.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > I don't want to upset anybody for any reason. I regret that my words
> > have upset you, but I think that they were misinterpreted in a way
> > that I couldn't possibly have predicted. The particular aspect of
>
> I strongly object to that. It's pretty obvious to me that addressing
> people in third person is very offending.

So, you object to him referring to you in the third person in an email,
and you object to him saying it was "misinterpreted". Are you going to
object to my email too?

I think everyone can accept that you interpreted what Peter said as
offensive, but you must also give the same acceptance that someone might
not consider it offensive. For example, I did not read it as offensive
at all.

I think it might have been in the third person because at that point,
Peter didn't expect a reply from you, and put you on the "TO" line
merely as a courtesy. He could have put out an email about reverting
the patch without you on the email header at all, I guess --- then he
could have referred to you without offending you.

> > How could anybody on the RMT judge what was going on sensibly? There
> > was *zero* information from you (the original committer, our point of
> > contact) about an item that is in a totally unfamiliar part of the
> > code to every other committer. We were effectively forced to make
> > very
> > conservative assumptions about the deadline. I think that it's very
> > likely that this could have been avoided if only you'd engaged to
> > some
> > degree -- if you had said it was a short deadline then we'd likely
> > have taken your word for it, as the relevant subject matter expert
> > and
> > committer in charge of the item. But we were never given that choice.
>
> The same holds the other way round, I only understood later that you
> wanted more information. Had I known that earlier, I would have gladly
> given them.

Let me be practical here --- the more someone has to be chased for a
reply, the less confidence they have in that person. If the RMT
contacts you about something, and obviously they have had to take usual
efforts to contact you, the more it is on you to give a full report and
a timeline of when you will address the issue. If they had to chase you
around, and you gave them a short answer, the less confidence they have
in this getting resolved in a timely manner.

It is the RMT's responsibility to resolve things in a timely manner, and
since they have contacted you, you should be going out of your way to at
least give them confidence that it will be dealt with by you, rather
than them. Whether the problem is them not asking for a timeline or you
not offering one, the real solution would have been to provide a
timeline to them when they contacted you, since if the RMT is contacting
you, it is a serious issue.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.