[csw-maintainers] On examining proposals (was: new mailing list?)

[Philip Brown]

Hello Maciej,

I have read through your whole email. I will attempt to condense a reply.
First of all, thank you for recognizing the responsabilities of the
release manager, as a person to "say no, at the right times".

I'm also glad that you brought up the issue of *perceived* bias,
discouraging people from
discussing issues, even when there may be no bias at all.

If you doubt whether I am being honest in my technical objections, and
suspect that I am merely "stalling" somehow; the solution is very
straightforward, although it does require you do some work:
find solutions to my objections, and see how I react.


You write:
>It would also help if you, being in the leadership position, to
>present a summary of the gains and losses from each possible choice,
>what would be the size of the impact of each potential problem, and
>what would be the tipping point on the yes/no balance.  How many
>people would be affected by the flaw?  Can it be supported by any
>statistics or estimated numbers?

This does not scale well. It should be up to the person making the
proposal, to come up with additional numbers, etc to support the
proposal.
This is completely standard behaviour. Go look at how any "review
board" or QA management/release management process works in the "real
world".
Is it up to the board, or the submitter, to find solutions to any
issues that are raised?
It is up to the submitter!

In the past, occasionally, people have spent the time to do research
on numbers as you suggest. Most of the time, the results supported my
position :) but sometimes, they have done the opposite,and I have
changed my position.



> Of course, you can shrug and say that you don't care about that and if
> there's a communication problem, you just stop working with the
> individual in question.  Sure, it's one of the things you can do.
> Maybe it's not worth your time to do research and make more extensive
>  evaluations.

I dont just "stop working with the individual". I always wait for them
to respond to any issues I have brought up.  It is usually the other
individual who cannot be bothered to do the extra research, yet puts
the blame on me, for not finding the solution, to THEIR proposal.
This is not right for them to blame me for not doing their work.


In the case of the "alternatives" issue,though, I have actually gone
above and beyond my responsabilities, and actually done the work for
"the other side". I have looked around, and found another solution,
that does EXACTLY what you wanted, yet solves all my objections to it.

This is something you could have done yourself, but you chose not to
do the work.
Even so, I have handed you the solution on a platter. But you still
choose not to do the work.

Yet now you are blaming me for getting in the way of your proposal ???

It seems to me you are treating me very poorly here.