Stephen Smoogen wrote:
> I may be in that list of toning down, but that is OK. Look it's really
> time for new people to come in and break things. It is the only way they
> really learn if something is something that should be really avoided or
> was a taboo we had from the 1990's which we can't see as cargo culting
> anymore.
>
> Maybe a bunch of packages will be dropped and Fedora will become 'useless'
> to some of us older contributors. This isn't the first time that has
> happened with the distribution (we saw large drop-offs after we stopped
> Xen and when we changed desktops to GNOME3.) and if the distribution is to
> last as an institution, it won't be the last. We who aren't happy with it
> can either make do with something else, adapt, or finally retire to grow
> potatoes like all the programmers I knew from the 1980s who had gotten
> tired of all the changes over the years.
But what if the major influx of new contributors that you proponents of this
proposal are hoping for never arrives? (Something I think is quite likely to
happen, considering that the main barrier to entry is NOT the mailing list.)
Then you will have driven away existing key contributors without anyone to
replace them, and Fedora will be dead.
Also keep in mind that experienced contributors are the only ones able to
work on certain complex tasks and also to mentor new contributors so that
they will eventually become experienced. Chase them away and all the
experience will be lost, no matter how many new contributors you attract.
The first priority of a project MUST ALWAYS be to keep the existing
contributors. Attracting new ones can only come second.
That said, looking at how the "feedback" to this "proposal" is being handled
(yet again), I guess that all that is really going to change in practice is
that instead of completely ignoring or trying to explain away all mailing
list feedback, you folks will be completely ignoring or trying to explain
away all Discourse feedback. How proposals are supposed to work is that
somebody suggests something, then feedback is requested, then it is
discussed, and only then a decision is made. But how it is actually working
is that a small group of people decides something in a closed-door meeting,
then calls it a "proposal", asks for "feedback" on the mailing list to give
an illusion of transparency and democracy, but is not actually willing to
act on the feedback (because the decision has long been made elsewhere),
instead only trying to explain why it "does not matter".
The sad thing is that I have even seen several replies trying to explain
away their OWN objections to the proposal, arguing that it is normal that
they as experienced contributors are not the target user base of the
discussion platform. But guess what, it is not (normal). This is a developer
mailing list, experienced contributors are THE target.
Kevin Kofler
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