Hi, On 24/11/2014 15:06, kcrisman wrote: > It seemed to me that this was an attempt to provide some slightly less > arbitrary measure than "the BDFL and whoever he likes" or "the release > manager and his friends". I am pretty sure that there were calls to > perhaps find a different measure. Naturally, it is still arbitrary, but > in the end any such list would be arbitrary, which is why I don't see it > as necessary or welcome. But the effort was honest enough, I believe.
OK. From that perspective, it is better than worse. The Sage community still deserves far better. > It could have also been based on posts to sage-devel or changes on Trac > or reputation on ask.sagemath (my favorite ;-) j/k) but in the end it > was just a suggestion, and I don't think it went anywhere. Did it? > This thread is VERY long... As for me, any such ranking is wrong, by its hierarchical essence. "Objective ranking" does not means anything, the choice of criteria will only reflect the well-established point of view. This does not fosters diversity, since what is different does not score within the ranking. This creates spam (e.g. going back and forth within dirty commits, use loops instead of list comprehensions, taking even more place on sage-devel to keep one's dominant position, and so on). Let me tell a story. A vetcor of plague is a small jumping insect (flea) that lives on rats (resp. squirrel in America) skin. Killing rats is an efficient way to fight plague. During the plague epidemies of the previous century, there has been sometimes a bounty offered for killing rats, the population was paid by local government to bring dead rats. This makes sense. Guess what ? The population grew rats ! Once a measurement becomes an objective, it is no longer a measurement. We can see this phenomenon with bibliometry, let us not let enter this into Sage. >> [Edited because this should be a family show] > Because of the linguistic issues you mentioned earlier, perhaps you were > not aware that the insult you used for the list of names is considered > fairly vulgar in the United States; I cannot speak to how it is > perceived by English-speaking communities elsewhere, including those in > the sciences using English as a lingua franca. This (and various people > doing similar things on Trac) may turn off as many people to Sage > development by 'proving' it is unprofessional than any rules here. I > know that there are many who would disagree with me on whether "strong > language" (whatever that means) should be used on sage-devel, or whether > asking people to refrain even when angry is just censorship, but > nonetheless it will also, incrementally (differential addition ala > Tolstoy, maybe) do so. I am sorry if you felt shocked, and i apologize for that. If "penis" is an acceptable word, it works exactly the same in this case. This sentence was not meant as an insult toward members of the list (they did not chose to be here), i was just pointing the patriarchal nature of such a ranking (not the people). The fact that no women appear in this list is not random (btw, this is not better on ask.sagemath, nor sage-devel). This list is related to power, normalization and domination ; i can of course not speak for women, let me at least be sarchastic about patriarchy. Size of code does not matter. > Hopefully others will have more cogent discussion of this. Again, I > don't think there is any proto-oligarchy forming - for the zillionth > time, I will recommend reading about governance in open source and why > it is so different than in other domains - but it's definitely worth > discussing. Of course this should be discussed, and this was the point of the "missing dependencies" subject ! What could be said about governance models in free software ? Perhaps just noticing that, according to flosspols 2006 study, while there are 28% of women in proprietary software development (which bias may be explained by the societal picture you rightly mentionned in a previous post), they are only 1.5% in free software development (6% is the highest estimation i found on the web), this difference can not be found on societal picture, but within our developments models. So, while learning about existing governance models is necessary, we have to find our way. Having a look to the Sage developper map may be pretty depressing at this point :( Ciao, Thierry On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 06:06:56AM -0800, kcrisman wrote: > > > > > Trac tickets and comments, however, are public. Thus, among the many > > good questions raised by Thierry which deserve an answer, I am also > > interested by the answer to the following question: > > > > I consider myself as a Sage developer, i have never heard about this > > initiative before. Could you please tell us more about the context, e.g. > > - who is on the short list ? > > - with which motivation ? > > - which concrete examples in mind ? > > > > > > > I am also interested in this, and for the record only heard about it when > the first email came through, but because ANYONE (group or not) could have > sent such an email at any point, and since it is clear that the community > can discuss and/or reject it (even before the current voting thread), I was > not particularly worried about it. > > There are in fact hundreds of Sage developers, and most of them do not seem > to be voting or discussing at all. > > I am glad you brought up a lot of these points. A brief rejoinder as to > why I do not see them as particularly bad, *in the current Sage context* > (important qualifier): > > > Establishing such a list is (again) a strong attack against the > Sage community whose existence relies in openness and diversity: > > I disagree; it seems unwise, but there are many successful and open and > diverse open source projects who have a "committers list" or something like > that of people who are allowed to make commits, which is a far stronger > power; it is the exercise of the power that makes the difference. To > paraphrase Stalin, "How many divisions does Sage have"? Answer: none. > Again, I don't think it is wise, but in reality any use of beyond serious > cases would be > > > With such a perspective, people who organize Sage days and > tutorial sessions, teach with Sage, report bugs, write books, review > patches, ask > > questions, provide support to newcomers, discuss code design, help in > Sage deployment, maintain the infrastructure, provide buildbots,... are not > > really useful, not really contributing to Sage's development. This > is insulting ! > > It seemed to me that this was an attempt to provide some slightly less > arbitrary measure than "the BDFL and whoever he likes" or "the release > manager and his friends". I am pretty sure that there were calls to > perhaps find a different measure. Naturally, it is still arbitrary, but in > the end any such list would be arbitrary, which is why I don't see it as > necessary or welcome. But the effort was honest enough, I believe. It > could have also been based on posts to sage-devel or changes on Trac or > reputation on ask.sagemath (my favorite ;-) j/k) but in the end it was just > a suggestion, and I don't think it went anywhere. Did it? This thread is > VERY long... > > > [Edited because this should be a family show] > Because of the linguistic issues you mentioned earlier, perhaps you were > not aware that the insult you used for the list of names is considered > fairly vulgar in the United States; I cannot speak to how it is perceived > by English-speaking communities elsewhere, including those in the sciences > using English as a lingua franca. This (and various people doing similar > things on Trac) may turn off as many people to Sage development by > 'proving' it is unprofessional than any rules here. I know that there are > many who would disagree with me on whether "strong language" (whatever that > means) should be used on sage-devel, or whether asking people to refrain > even when angry is just censorship, but nonetheless it will also, > incrementally (differential addition ala Tolstoy, maybe) do so. > > Hopefully others will have more cogent discussion of this. Again, I don't > think there is any proto-oligarchy forming - for the zillionth time, I will > recommend reading about governance in open source and why it is so > different than in other domains - but it's definitely worth discussing. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. 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