FESCo wants to ban direct stable pushes in Bodhi (urgent call for feedback)

[Peter Jones]

On 02/26/2010 08:55 AM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Michael Schwendt wrote:
>> That would be a ridiculous decision. It would be much better to disable
>> that feature only for those update submitters who really have been
>> dilettantish enough to use it inappropriately more than once.
> 
> Yeah, that's a good idea. We really need to avoid punishing everyone for the 
> few incompetent maintainers who screw up!

These constant insinuations that anybody who makes a mistake is incompetent
are really starting to bug me. The idea isn't that we want to punish *anybody*.

When you're at the circus watching the clown ride a bicycle across a high-wire,
he's got a safety net. It's not because the circus thinks he's an incompetent
high-wire cyclist - it's because people occasionally make mistakes, and the
circus would rather have him around to do his act again when he falls.

Fedora is no different; there are many very competent maintainers out there,
and all of us will eventually make a mistake. These mistakes sometimes have
repercussions that are fairly serious, and when they do, it's important that
the safety net is already there.

The goal of the discussion in FESCo is to make sure there's an adequate safety
net, so that when maintainers make simple mistakes, they should have to deal
with them - not with exponentially large consequences and 4am phone calls.

Right now, the only proposal for doing so is to restrict what can be released
without spending some time in testing. The discussion has included the concept
of criteria for merit-based expedited testing, so if anything truly is urgent
it can be *tested* and released quickly. Admittedly this needs to be fleshed
out further.

In this thread there's been some negative response and some support for the
idea, and there's no clear winner. That said, what you've given us in response
is strongly vitriolic, and frankly it's becoming tiresome.

If you don't think the proposal is very good, that's fine - give us another one
that attempts to accomplish the goal. You weren't elected "FESCo Monitor"; the
guy who comes and tells the mailing list whenever FESCo is discussing something
you think is scary. You were elected to FESCo because people thought you might
have good ideas you could contribute. If you think this isn't the right way
to provide a safety net for package maintainers - what is?

-- 
        Peter

First things first -- but not necessarily in that order.
		-- The Doctor