Governance revisited (Wineconf report)

[Jeremy White]

>>Wine works fine as-is in my opinion ;)
> 
> 
> Which you are entitled to, but my opinion happens to differ.  Whether the wine 
> core source has all the patches, (Which it doesn't - many, but not all) isn't 
> relevant, it's the process that they go through that I believe could improve.

For the record, Governance is something we often spend a chunk of
time on at each Wine conference.

Brian has written a nice summary of Wineconf on WWN
(thanks Brian!), including a reprise of the talk on governance.

Being insufferably long winded, and feeling the need to create
a complete record, I would add a few things to what Brian wrote.

First, I think there was clear and essentially unanimous agreement
that the current high standards for quality were a Good Thing (TM),
including the Holy Order of Writing Conformance Tests.

Second, I think we had fairly clear agreement that so long as
he can handle it, it is most efficient to have Alexandre as
the sole maintainer.  Obviously, the more help he gets
from component maintainers (e.g. Mike/MSI, Rob/COM), the better.

Third, I think there was clear agreement that Alexandre is
often a Royal Pain In the Ass (RPITA).  He ignores patches,
responds tersely, and sometimes delivers the occassional
kiss of death:  "I can't tell you what to change,
but your patch is wrong."

However, we, the assembled 30 or so of the most core Wine
developers, could not think of a single case where Alexandre
had been proven wrong.  Nor could we think of a single
instance when he had failed to be persuaded by reasonable argument;
making a rather compelling case that he is generally right.

We also talk, from time to time, about building some sort
of patch tracking system to allow for better management
of patches.  Something like a 'ticket' system, so
people could see the status of their email, whether or
not it had been reviewed, etc, etc.  I think there is some
sense that this might be useful, but it's a sufficiently
complex problem, and it has to be written in emacs,
that we always defer it for the future.

So I think the strong (if not unamimous) consensus was to
continue on as we are, but make an effort to provide
an 'ambassador' program of some kind, particularly around
folks that are new to Wine.

If you have a specific concrete suggestion for change,
this would be a fine time to put it forward.

But if your proposal is largely:  "Alexandre should accept
more patches", I think you'll find that none of the core
Wine developers will support you in that, so it's not
worth the effort, at least not in this venue.

Cheers,

Jeremy