On 09/22/2016 01:51 AM, David Golden wrote:
*Our position:*
(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>"), 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.
On 09/22/2016 01:53 AM, David Golden wrote:
For the good of the community, we believe the situation is best
resolved through discussion rather than fiat. We believe the DBIC
maintainers, authors and/or the broader DBIC community are the best
informed to decide the future direction of DBIC.
Apologies for the late reply, had trouble finding time to deal with this.
The entire thread[1][2][3] got skewed really fast, with a number of
assumptions laid out as facts implicitly recognized by all sides (or
even by anything resembling a majority). This is decidedly not the case,
thus is it really hard for me to answer the raised questions directly in
any way approaching a satisfactory manner.
For instance the content of the "our position" heading is entirely
centered around the premise that a dispute exists between me (the
1st-come) and a wronged community of people spearheaded by a team of
dissatisfied individuals ("maintainers"). While this indeed may be the
case - this is the first time I ever hear about it, and what's worse -
from a 3rd party ("we"/pause admins).
To cut down on the cross-chatter I will summarize the chain of
verifiable events, and then briefly outline my plans, finishing with a
question to the PAUSE admins at the end. It took me a considerable
amount of time to put this together, I hope you will respect this effort
by crafting a similarly thought out response.
=== Timeline
1) 2006-03-03: I make my first contribution ( a test enhancement ) to
the project [4]
2) 2008-04-20: I make my first own commit to the project repository [5]
3) 2009-02-11: First indexed release by myself [6]
4) 2010-06-10: mst reassigns 1st come of the DBIC distribution to myself
5) End 2010 ~ Mid 2012: Seeing clear signs of trouble I go above and
beyond trying to institute some sort of formal structure to stem the
tide of "wfm" patches landing with no regard for the (now extremely
large) user-base
6) ~ May 2012: I fail on all counts to organize anything resembling a
process and quit in exasperation after a particularly bad breach of
quality ( during which the rest of the folks involved abdicate any
responsibility )
7) May 2012 ~ Nov 2012: The project is adrift, with only minor fixups
- lib/ receives a total of 30 commits[7] ( some of which end up being
reverted later )
8) 2012-07-24: I am forced to come back and perform rather complex
~2900loc surgery[8] to back out unfinished work that was shipped despite
my objections, after several weeks of bugreports go warnocked
9) 2012-08-24: A new version of DBIC ships after almost 2 months of an
unusable indexed release
10) 2012-11-03: Seeing how development is effectively frozen I guilt
myself into coming back, to at least finish the optimization work thrown
away earlier
11) Nov 2012 ~ July 2012: I gradually get re-involved in the project in
full, which ends up un-freezing things, leading to a noticeable uptick
of sub-par work from problematic devs
12) 2013-07-12: Approaching my breaking point once again, and already
knowing how this movie ends I write a plea to the user-base to determine
once and for all what does it actually want from the library[9]. I
receive an overwhelming display of support[10], with multiple high
ranking names asserting my right to single-handedly steer the project.
As a result DBIC transitions (to my great *dis*pleasure) to a BDFL-based
one: everyone and everything is deferred to me as a sole holder of
responsibility.
13) 2013-11-28: Last ever commit by mst fit for inclusion into the
master branch [11]
14) 2013-11-29: Last ever commit by mst to any of the known to me DBIC
repos [12]
15) Mid 2013 ~ Mid 2015: A number of less-than-awesome "new wave"
maintainers take control of critical pieces of the wider dependency
chain. With the quality of a large section of the CPAN offerings in
free-fall[11], continuous work on the DBIC project becomes more and more
pointless (as the project can not exist in a vacuum).
16) Oct 2015 ~ Dec 2015: Realizing that nothing short of "beyond
full-time" involvement in the DBIC project and the wider CPAN can yield
any long-term value, I make an attempt to secure funding for just this
kind of effort [13]
17) 2015-12-06: Above attempt fails [14]. I specifically write down (and
say [15]) "I will transfer myFIRSTCOME permissions
<http://perladvent.org/2013/2013-12-08.html>to perl developers of my
choosing"
18) 2015-12-07: mst approaches me on pm, with the ensuing (short, and
from what I can tell controversy-free) conversation taking place: [16]
19) 2015-12-25: Looking over the options for the project, and realizing
there is nothing even close to a qualified successor I commit to carry
out some more work before placing the project in maintenance-mode. I
detail the steps of what I am planning to do in [17]
20) Jan 2016 ~ Sep 2016: I start working down the self-imposed hitlist,
while looking for suitable employment. The search takes way more than
expected, and so does the implementation of the solutions to the
hitlist. A truly surreal (in hindsight) chain of events makes it
possible and reasonable for me to essentially dedicate nearly 9 extra
months to the project, albeit on goals markedly different from those
within the failed campaign plan. A part of the associated git reflog can
be seen in [18]. The progress has been steadily documented in
near-monthly updates at the official mailing list [19]
=== Present day
There have been several unscheduled releases since, some to fix failing
tests due to a shifting CPAN landscape [20][21] and one intermediate
release as recently as 3 months ago incorporating some of the work done
so far [22].
I continue to be involved in end-user support, both on the ML and on IRC
(though I reduced my engagement on the #dbix-class channel, and instead
try to help folks in a less polarized forum)
The commit-activity distribution since my involvement in the project is
the following:
~/devel/dbic$ git shortlog -sn dc7d89911 ^96e7f9ec | head -n 30
3101 Peter Rabbitson
616 Rafael Kitover
155 Arthur Axel "fREW" Schmidt
102 John Napiorkowski
78 Jess Robinson
76 Rob Kinyon
75 Norbert Buchmuller
70 Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker
67 Alexander Hartmaier
66 Matt S Trout
58 Justin Hunter
57 Robert Buels
41 Nigel Metheringham
35 Gordon Irving
32 Luke Saunders
31 Johannes Plunien
27 Guillermo Roditi
27 Robert Bohne
25 Amiri Barksdale
21 Ash Berlin
21 Moritz Onken
18 Karen Etheridge
16 Brendan Byrd
16 Jason M. Mills
16 Wallace Reis
14 Daniel Ruoso
13 Eden Cardim
12 Ton Voon
10 Florian Ragwitz
8 Dan Dascalescu
Out of the top 4 (3-digit numbers of committers):
- Rafael Kitover left the project 3 years ago
- Frew Schmidt is a close friend who has neither the time nor the
desire[23] to take over the project
- John Napiorkowski already has his hands full with Catalyst, and to the
best of my knowledge is distancing himself from that as well
In more recent times (past ~year) the only other person on the above
list who contributed code is Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker. Some of his work
has already made it into mailnline, while other has been delayed ( none
of it rejected ), due to a combination of review tuits and/or tuits
necessary to fix sub-par sections of the submissions.
=== Future plans
As of today (Oct 1st) I am still enjoying some available time, due to an
unexpected delay in the commencement of my employment (now hopefully Oct
17th)
I am planning to use this available time well, just as I have
demonstrably done so far (last substantial merge tool place just
yesterday). The checklist introduced in [17] is nearly fully burned down
(albeit at a cost of a bit more than 50 hours).
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. I must stress that I am removing myself from the
equation as well, so if the new powers that be decide to restore
everything - I will have no tools to prevent them from doing so.
The selected person will not be announced until after the fact, in order
to insulate him from having to deal with mst, before any permission
transfer has taken place (or before my own work has even completed). In
order to ease tensions I *will* share that he is a well known community
member and was an invitee to at least one Perl5 QA Hackathon.
=== Questions to "maintainers" (addressed on CC, both as per PAUSE and
as per a list of who mst considers "maintainers", based on an email from
2016-09-09)
If any of you, truly has any complaints with my past performance, my
current work, or my near-future plans: I invite you to lodge a complaint
on the project's mailing list. I am not making the same announcement on
the mailing lsit itself, because up to this day there have been no
actual credible complaints by anyone (that I am aware of). If any of the
readers feel this is dishonest - feel free to make such a post on the ML
yourself.
In any case: if the next weeks reveal that there indeed is strong
pushback by actual developers/users against any of my choices (i.e.
there is a strong reversal of opinion compared to [10]) I pledge not to
ignore them but act to address them.
=== Response to issue raised by mst
And coming to the "elephant in the room": I want to state in the most
unambiguous terms possible that I do not recognize Matt S Trout as a
spokesperson for any development or user community related to DBIC or
for the Perl5-space at large for that matter. While his
groundbreaking-style contributions had an undisputed positive impact on
the language as a whole, his brazen disrespect of end-users and an
abhorrent communication style had an equally significant negative impact
on nearly all forums he frequents.
As such, quite literally "for the good of the community", I irredeemably
classify any and all complaints and concerns raised by mst as void of
any substance. Therefore none of his grievances are destined to receive
an answer.
In other words - I will not be engaging in any conversation with Matt
Trout in any shape way or form (direct or mediated). If the PAUSE admins
feel his complaints do have merit - the only way to address them would
be by fiat.
=== Question to the PAUSE admins
To put it in the simplest terms: what is the conversation we are having
here? We are talking about one of the (if not *the*) most openly and
responsibly led projects on CPAN. Moreover I have not deviated from a
single action-item as outlined at the end of [14] and in [17] - 9(!)
months ago. The only failing is that the entire process took
significantly more time than I originally anticipated. Please explain
yourselves.
Regards
Peter Rabbitson
[1] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/09/msg96115.html
[2] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/09/msg96139.html
[3] http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.modules/2016/09/msg96140.html
[4] https://github.com/dbsrgits/dbix-class/commit/9fcda149
[5] https://github.com/dbsrgits/dbix-class/commit/96e7f9ec
[6] https://metacpan.org/release/RIBASUSHI/DBIx-Class-0.08011
[7] dbic_checkout$ git log --format='%h %aN %cD %s' --reverse ^e6ff36589
0d8817b^ lib
[8] https://github.com/dbsrgits/dbix-class/commit/c9733800
[9]
http://blogs.perl.org/users/peter_rabbitson/2013/07/crowdsourcing-self-confidence.html
[10]
http://blogs.perl.org/users/peter_rabbitson/2013/07/crowdsourcing-self-confidence.html#comments
[11] https://github.com/dbsrgits/dbix-class/commit/6fc6d60c
[12] https://github.com/dbsrgits/dbix-class/commit/b16a3603
[13]
https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/3n4c85/i_am_a_perl5_developer_asking_25_companies_to/
[14]
https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/3vnsiw/suspending_efforts_on_my_riba2016_crowdfunding/
[15] https://youtu.be/U7KOJCUITVs?t=318
[16] https://gist.github.com/ribasushi/f2502a29f5e2c7c48e03f7bd34e7ddd2
[17] http://blogs.perl.org/users/peter_rabbitson/2015/12/riba2016-ends.html
[18] https://gist.github.com/ribasushi/6ea33c921927c7571f02e5c8b09688ef
[19]
http://dbix-class.35028.n2.nabble.com/Re-Traffic-pattern-changes-ahead-td7578918.html
[20] https://metacpan.org/release/RIBASUSHI/DBIx-Class-0.082821#whatsnew
[21] https://metacpan.org/release/RIBASUSHI/DBIx-Class-0.08271#whatsnew
[22] https://metacpan.org/release/RIBASUSHI/DBIx-Class-0.082840#whatsnew
[23]
http://blogs.perl.org/users/peter_rabbitson/2013/07/crowdsourcing-self-confidence.html#comment-1129819
