On Wed, 3 Feb 2016 08:44:32 -0700 Jerry James <loganjerry@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Several people have said something similar lately, and it worries me. > I understand that we're trying to combat the hostility some packagers > show when somebody does something to "their" packages, but I'm > concerned that we may have swung the pendulum too far the other way. > I foresee two problems: > > 1. Demotivating packagers > > I know a number of companies have experimented with "ownership-free" > models of code development, but they are able to offer incentives that > Fedora cannot offer, such as money and kudos offered in front of > coworkers. What motivates volunteer packagers to do what they do? > I'd like to hear from a few packagers on this topic. > > What motivates me is pride in my work, and recognition of that good > work by others. If I'm just one packager in a big cloud of packagers, > and none of us is really responsible for anything ... well, that's > quite demotivating. But thats not how I look at it least. Instead of being one package who says "My packages are great", you can say "My packages are great, and other people help me when they can, and I help them out and our community is great". It's not that no one is responsible for anything, it's that everyone is responsible for everything. If you see some way you can help, you do, and you don't stop with "oh, thats not my package, I'll let the owner deal with it" > I am the primary point of contact for a few dozen packages where I > have done all of the packaging work, all of the reporting of bugs > upstream, all of the arguing with upstream to do something about > sticky license situations, all of the handling of bug reports. I'm > sure the same is true for many other packagers. People feel ownership > of what they work on. This is human nature. I fear that by denying > human nature with this "those aren't your packages" mantra, we will > suck the joy out of packaging work and see packagers less willing to > do that work. I don't think anyone wants to take that away. Instead we just want to avoid the "These packages are mine mine mine, and no one can touch them" when in fact you are just stewarding them for Fedora. > > 2. Motivating responsibility-free drive-by modifications > > If nobody owns any packages, then who is responsible for fixing > package problems? I think the reason some packagers react with > hostility to others changing "their" packages is that we have a > handful of provenpackagers who make incorrect changes to packages and > then walk away, without sticking around to fix the problems they > caused with their incorrect changes. I've got two recent examples of > this. I won't use any names, because my purpose is not to point > fingers. It's not that nobody owns any packages, it's that we all do. ....snip cases of bad provenpackager behavior.... > If I send these two provenpackagers a somewhat hostile email, are you > going to blame me? I have no problem with most provenpackager > changes. In general, they have an obvious purpose and save me the > work of making the same change myself. But changes like the ones > above make more work for me, work that could have been avoided if the > provenpackager in question had just bothered to make some attempt, any > attempt, to contact me first. Well, yes, because I don't think hostile email is ever a good idea. :) But did you manage to talk to either of these provenpackagers and hear back from them? > > I think we need to ask ourselves, as a project, what behaviors we want > to motivate and what behaviors we want to demotivate in our packagers. > I think we need to take human nature, flawed as it is, into account > when doing so. I fear that this "nobody owns any packages" mantra is > not providing the motivations and demotivations that we really want. Perhaps we can explain it better by saying "everyone owns all packages" ? kevin
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