Matthew Garrett wrote:
> There was no vote amongst developers. A decision was made and there was
> no significant dissent amongst the developer body. Like most upstream
> projects, decisions about X result from gaining rough consensus amongst
> the relevant people. User viewpoints will be considered as part of this,
> but there's no concept of "This many people complained on the mailing
> list, therefore we are forbidden from carrying out this change".
I think the big problem is the "mailing list consensus" decision making
process which is used by many Free Software projects. I've seen it happen
in other projects too (e.g. GCC). How it usually goes:
1. maintainer X posts a patch to the mailing list for discussion,
2. some people post objections, others approve of the patch,
3. the discussion eventually dies off because people realize nobody is going
to change their mind and move on - no visible consensus was ever reached,
4. maintainer X somehow concludes consensus was reached (the mechanisms at
work are not clear to me: Maybe maintainer X subconciously doesn't notice
the objections? Maybe they conclude that consensus was reached because no
new objections are being raised, despite the existing ones not having been
addressed? Maybe there is something which gives insiders a feeling of
consensus which an outsider just doesn't see?) and commits the change.
Kevin Kofler
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