Re: Civility of core/hackers group

Wrote a rather long message first time through.  Anyway, basic problem
is the major tickmarks on the next release.

SMPng, KSEs, and various security overhauls are touching many portions
of the sourcecode in a single shot.  Normal development since the
project started has been fairly isolated.  So theres a bit of a
headache with people committing where they normally wouldn't, but
waiting for due process could take forever (commits across 4 or 5
different maintainers sections).  So, after the big commits, the
maintainers do bug triage.

All in all, it's working rather well.  A ton of progress has been made
and v5 release will be rather nice.

It'd be kinda like PostgreSQL implementing a fully object based
storage mechanism and interface, going threaded, and replacing node
trees with something else for v7.3.  Once you start one, might as well
do the others since you hit most of the code anyway.  With 3 or 4
people doing that it can be done.  Getting 100+ comitters (not to
mention those sending in patches) to work along side that mess and you
can see why Jordan is tired of baby sitting.

Can't blame him.  I think he had the most fun when he was simply
coming up with brilliant ideas like the ports tree.  I still think he
has a few ideas left.  Hopefully this will allow him the time to
implement -- probably on Darwin, but if it's good it'll float to <name
project here> shortly after.
--
Rod
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 9:50 PM
Subject: [HACKERS] Civility of core/hackers group


> Here is the resignation letter from Jordan Hubbard, long time
FreeBSD
> core member.  The interesting part is where he explains that being
in
> the core/hackers group isn't fun anymore:
>
> http://daily.daemonnews.org/view_story.php3?story_id=2837
>
> FreeBSD is certainly a larger project, so I don't know how relevant
it
> is to our group, but I do think it is important to recognize how
easily
> a group can slip into a unhealthy situation.  The killer line is:
>
>   ...core still feels too much like the pre-WWII Polish Parliament
>   sometimes, where we're fully capable of arguing some issue right
up to
>   the point where tanks are rolling through the front door and
rendering
>   the whole debate somewhat moot.
>
> We have been very fortunate to have avoided such problems since we
> started six years ago, and I hope it never happens.
>
> For those curious what the PostgreSQL core group discusses behind
closed
> doors -- basically nothing.  I don't think we have had any
meaningful
> discussion for many months, so it is not like things are being
debated
> in core that you aren't hearing about;  nothing is happening in core
> because there no conflicts.
>
> --
>   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
>   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania
19026
>
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