[Dbix-class] IMPORTANT: A discussion of DBIC governance and future development

Wed Oct 5 03:24:54 GMT 2016

On Sun, Oct 2, 2016 at 4:31 AM, Peter Rabbitson <ribasushi at cpan.org> wrote:
> I again must stress that there has been a huge 9+ months "discussion
> period" during which nobody (besides mst) came forward expressing
> concerns regarding my plans.

I had a lot of things to say, but I find that others have covered most of
the
main points, and I don't think I can say anything to persuade Peter away
from
the things he has already decided.  So, I will address my comments to the
PAUSE
admins instead:

1) I didn't think we were in a discussion period; I thought we were in a
period
of waiting for Peter to decide that he'd made all the changes he still
wanted
to make, so he would hand off control so that others could start submitting
change proposals again.

2) Once Peter had announced he was going to unilaterally hand off permission
bits to someone else, the slow-motion train wreck had already begun, but
since
the rest of the process was moving slowly, there seemed no pressing need to
act
immediately. Indeed, the more we waited, the more slowly things seemed to
progress.

3) Since I had contracted Peter (via my employer) for particular patches
last
year, I didn't want to say or do anything that would distract him or disrupt
that work, or become a conflict of interest with it; see also (2).

4) The length of time of Peter's involvement in the project, and the
intensity
and exclusivity thereof, entitles him to the gratitude from and
appreciation of
the community; it does not entitle him to unilaterally decide its future
direction.

5) Opening up control of the project (in the sense of having authority to
decide what is committed to the mainline code branch and released) to a
larger
number of people is in the best interests of all users, so long as that
group
is technically competent to do so and respects the critical nature of this
code.  The natural starting point for this group is the set of users who
currently have PAUSE permissions [1]; I trust this group collectively to
decide
who they wish to add to the group.  They also may wish to add additional
users
who can push commits to git (we found this to work well with Moose), but it
would also be reasonable to keep that locked down to the core group for now.

[1] Current PAUSE permissions on DBIx::Class are:

ABRAXXA (Alexander Hartmaier)
ARODLAND (Andrew Rodland; hobbs)
FREW (Arthur Axel "fREW" Schmidt)
ILMARI (Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker)
JROBINSON (Jess Robinson; castaway)
MSTROUT (Matt Trout; mst)
RIBASUSHI (Peter Rabbitson)

- Karen Etheridge, ether at cpan.org

On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 1:37 PM, David Golden <xdg at xdg.me> wrote:

> Hello, DBIC community.
>
> I apologize in advance for the length of this email, but I urge everyone
> that uses DBIC to read it fully as it relates to the future of this
> important module.
>
> For those who don't know me, I'm DAGOLDEN on CPAN and I've joined this
> list in my capacity as a PAUSE <http://pause.perl.org> [1] administrator.
>
> For those on the list who aren't familiar with CPAN administration, PAUSE
> is the service that authors use to upload modules to CPAN.  Among other
> functions, it generates the index that maps modules names to downloadable
> tarballs – e.g. "DBIx::Class" to "RIBASUSHI/DBIx-Class-0.082840.tar.gz"
> on a CPAN mirror.
>
> PAUSE also maintains a permissions model
> <http://perladvent.org/2013/2013-12-08.html> [2] for each module
> namespace with two levels: "primary maintainer" (also called "first come")
> and "co-maintainer" (aka "co-maint").  Primary maintainers can grant and
> revoke co-maint permissions.  Both levels can upload tarballs to PAUSE,
> triggering an update to the index.
>
> Over the past several weeks, I've been the PAUSE administrator selected to
> mediate a dispute over future disposition of primary permissions for the
> DBIx::Class namespace.
>
> The dispute was triggered by Peter Rabbitson's "Traffic pattern changes
> ahead"
> <http://lists.scsys.co.uk/pipermail/dbix-class/2016-September/012187.html>
> [3] email to this list on September 6, in which he said:
>
> *I have also firmly selected who will be getting the DBIx::Class *
> *namespace first-come[2], the transfer of which will also happen *
> *somewhere around the end of September.*
>
> Because the identity of the new primary maintainer was neither disclosed
> nor discussed with Matt Trout (the founder of the DBIC project, current
> co-maintainer and also PAUSE administrator) or other co-maintainers,
> several private conversations between ensued between Matt, Peter and others
> about this declaration.
>
> On September 15, Peter notified PAUSE administrators via the
> modules at perl.org mailing list of an "Upcoming PAUSE permissions dispute"
> <http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/09/msg96115.html> [4].
> Separately, Matt notified PAUSE administrators privately with his own
> concerns about a possible dispute (his email was later disclosed and I'll
> link to it later).
>
> On September 21, I privately emailed all DBIC maintainers (CPAN authors
> ABRAXXA, ARODLAND, FREW, ILMARI, JROBINSON, MSTROUT, and RIBASUSHI) on
> behalf of PAUSE administrators with our collective view of how this dispute
> would be best resolved.  Peter asked that any discussion be public, so I
> reposted it to the modules at perl.org mailing list as "Message from PAUSE
> Admins to DBIx::Class maintainers [resend]"
> <http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/09/msg96139.html> [5]
>
> I urge everyone to read that thread in full as well.  For reference, it
> includes a copy
> <http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/10/msg96178.html> [6]
> of Matt's previously private email to PAUSE administrators.
>
> Importantly, the thread summarizes PAUSE administrators' position on the
> dispute, which I repost verbatim here:
>
> *(1) Given the importance of DBIC to the broader Perl community (i.e. way*
> *"upriver" <http://neilb.org/2015/04/20/river-of-cpan.html
> <http://neilb.org/2015/04/20/river-of-cpan.html>>), we’d like to*
> *see a more open discussion between existing maintainers about what
> happens*
> *next in terms of DBIC leadership and control of primary permissions.*
>
> *(2) The best outcome from our perspective would be for a successor to be*
> *decided by consensus of existing maintainers.*
>
> *(3) Given a dispute among maintainers, the only outcome that is
> absolutely*
> *unacceptable to PAUSE admins would be a unilateral permissions transfer*
> *decision.*
>
> *(4) We really hope the DBIC maintainers and/or community can resolve this*
> *internally.*
>
> In the ensuing discussion, Peter disclosed additional details about his
> plans for the future of DBIC in the "Future plans" section of this email
> <http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/10/msg96174.html> [7]:
>
> *I am still planning to wrap up the remaining pieces, including some *
> *unannounced initiatives to get the project into the best shape possible *
> *to survive its leaderlessness.*
>
> *I am still planning to remove all co-maint perms and handover the *
> *first-come to a yet-undisclosed person. Given no clear line of *
> *succession, and the incredibly high stakes wrt compatibility, the only *
> *responsible thing to do is to select a single spot of responsibility and *
> *provide all possible support and infrastructure for a proper *
> *project-freeze.*
>
> In another email
> <http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/10/msg96182.html> [8],
> Peter suggested raising these issues explicitly on the DBIC mailing list:
>
> *As suggested in an earlier email: the PAUSE admins (as the only *
> *legitimate concerned party at this point) would likely benefit having *
> *this question asked in a wider forum ( the DBIC mailing list and/or *
> *other channels ). Essentially someone has to trigger a "vote of no *
> *confidence", otherwise this entire exchange is just a time consuming
> farce.*
>
> On behalf of the PAUSE administrators, we would therefore like to invite
> Peter to describe in more detail his plans for a "project freeze" and the
> role he envisions for a successor maintainer.  We invite Matt, other
> co-maintainers, and the DBIC community at large to add their thoughts about
> the specifics of the plan or about the situation in general.
>
> Given public and private discussions to date, we believe the DBIC
> community should consider questions such as:
>
>
>    - How should the future governance of the DBIC project be decided?
>    - Who should or shouldn't be involved in future governance?
>    - Should the project be "frozen" or should development continue?
>    - If "frozen", what specifically would a "freeze" entail? Would there
>    be exceptions?
>    - If not "frozen", what principles should govern development?  (Cathedral
>    vs Bazaar <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar>
>    [9] and/or New Jersey Style vs MIT Style
>    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better> [10])
>
> We believe these discussions, if had openly, honestly and constructively,
> will lead to the best resolution of this dispute for the DBIC community.
>
> Thank you for reading this far, and I look forward to reading the
> community's views on these matters.
>
> Sincerely,
> David Golden, PAUSE Administrator
>
> [1] http://pause.perl.org/
> [2] http://perladvent.org/2013/2013-12-08.html
> [3] http://lists.scsys.co.uk/pipermail/dbix-class/2016-September
> /012187.html
> [4] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/09/msg96115.html
> [5] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/09/msg96139.html
> [6] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/10/msg96178.html
> [7] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/10/msg96174.html
> [8] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/10/msg96182.html
> [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
> [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
>
> --
> David Golden <xdg at xdg.me> Twitter/IRC/GitHub: @xdg
>
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