On November 4, 2019 5:11:22 PM UTC, Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> wrote:
>Jonas Smedegaard <jo...@jones.dk> writes:
>
>> Scott is refering to Wouter's "prepare a GR proposal in private".
>
>> So a secret _preparation_ announced publicly which triggering the
>> thread.
>
>I frequently run ideas past a small number of people before posting
>them
>to a large audience just to make sure I don't make some stupid mistake.
>For highly political topics, that's even more important because opening
>a
>public discussion with something that doesn't get at the actual problem
>or
>misrepresents one side can cause a lot of noise and confusion and
>derail
>the attempt to solve the real problem.
>
>If you're trying to resolve a contentious dispute between (at least)
>two
>groups of people, giving them a heads-up first and making sure that
>you're
>being fair to their arguments is a pretty reasonable way to start.
>
>I think people are reading a bit too much into this. If anything, the
>problem was that Sam was extremely transparent about what he was
>preparing
>to do next, which prematurely started the conversation (for which I'm
>as
>responsible as anyone else). We were going to have the conversation
>anyway; I'm sure Sam wasn't planning on posting a GR and immediately
>calling for a vote.
No doubt. I realize Sam is in a bit of a damned if you do/damned if you don't
situation here. If he'd waited until he was ready with GR text, including
private consultation with some, then people (possibly including me) would be
whining about a cabal.
OTOH, this is an important topic for the project and so I don't think a
spirited debate should surprise anyone. I don't think it's likely to stop
until well after the GR vote is complete. The best way, IMO, to end a long,
draining thread on debian-devel is to publish the GR text so we can have
another long, draining thread on debian-vote.
Scott K
