Re: community decision-making & 8.5

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Josh Berkus<josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> wrote:
> Robert, Heikki,
>
>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2009-08/msg01651.php
>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2009-08/msg01983.php
>>
>> Josh's schedule was subsequently endorsed by Simon Riggs.  So by my
>> count we now have four votes for a 4-CF schedule and one for a 3-CF
>> schedule (me), maybe two if you count Tom, who I think was leaning in
>> that direction - so I guess that settles the matter?
>
> I think there's a fairly clear consensus in favor of 4-CF.  The reason
> you've not heard from anyone else on the topic is that nobody is
> objecting.  So, at this point, we should go with it and someone (me,
> Dave, Tom) should post a schedule somewhere.

I suggest -hackers for starters, on a new thread.

>> That implies that we need a release manager. Electing one would be the
>> first step. That's a lot of work and responsibility, with lots of
>> potential for making people cross, so in practice I think as soon as
>> someone steps up to the plate and volunteers to do it, he's the one.
>
> Having recently been immersed in the issues of the Perl 5 community, I'm
> going to disagree and say that having a singular release manager would
> be a bad idea.  While an autocrat is a more rapid decision-maker, he or
> she can also be a bottleneck ... and frequently is.
>
> I do think that we (core) should show more leadership in enforcing the
> deadlines that the hackers have already agreed on.

I was going to say that I'm perfectly fine with having an all-powerful
release manager, as long as it's me. I don't really think we need to
invest that much authority in one person, however - and certainly not
without more of a clearly-defined mandate for exactly what that person
is supposed to do with that authority. What I really think we need
is, as you say, more leadership in enforcing the agreed-upon
deadlines, and along with that, more leadership in setting the
deadlines (and other parameters) in the first place. However, I'm not
sure that that group should be coterminous with core. For example,
this is something that I'm pretty interested in helping with, and I am
obviously not a core team member. However, I'm not asking for an
exception just for me: I think that generally it's in the best
interest of the project to recruit MORE people to help with this work,
and if we say that it is the responsibility of core, then we're
confining it to a group of seven people of whom only five are
regularly active on -hackers. And several of those people are
committers who I would guess are somewhat overworked already.

I do think it would be good to have a list of who the people are who
are volunteering to help with commitfest and release management. ISTM
that well-organized list of such people would help a lot with
coordination and divvying up of responsibilities: who might be
available to help with X, who is already working on Y, etc.

...Robert