Civility of core/hackers group

We have been very fortunate to have avoided such problems since we
started six years ago, and I hope it never happens.

There sure are a lot of arguments in the hackers list tho :) I do wish
people would be a little less 'ad hominem' in their argument styles,
however.

It would be an interesting thing to consider what would happen to the
Postgres project if Tom left one day...

Chris

Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

We have been very fortunate to have avoided such problems since we
started six years ago, and I hope it never happens.

There sure are a lot of arguments in the hackers list tho :) I do wish
people would be a little less 'ad hominem' in their argument styles,
however.

Yes, things do get a little testy sometimes, and it does worry me, but
it seems to blow over quickly.

-- 
  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

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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There sure are a lot of arguments in the hackers list tho :) I do

wish

people would be a little less 'ad hominem' in their argument

styles,

however.

Yes, things do get a little testy sometimes, and it does worry me,

but

it seems to blow over quickly.

Bah.. You can't beat a good whiteboard dual.

Mailing lists don't make good whiteboards though...

Rod Taylor wrote:

There sure are a lot of arguments in the hackers list tho :) I do

wish

people would be a little less 'ad hominem' in their argument

styles,

however.

Yes, things do get a little testy sometimes, and it does worry me,

but

it seems to blow over quickly.

Bah.. You can't beat a good whiteboard dual.

Mailing lists don't make good whiteboards though...

"Whiteboard dual" is probably a good characterization.

-- 
  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

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Rod Taylor wrote:

There sure are a lot of arguments in the hackers list tho :) I do

wish

people would be a little less 'ad hominem' in their argument

styles,

however.

Yes, things do get a little testy sometimes, and it does worry me,

but

it seems to blow over quickly.

Bah.. You can't beat a good whiteboard dual.

Mailing lists don't make good whiteboards though...

"Whiteboard dual" is probably a good characterization.

Or, is it "dualing whiteboards" (banjo player not included.)

On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:

We have been very fortunate to have avoided such problems since we
started six years ago, and I hope it never happens.

There sure are a lot of arguments in the hackers list tho :) I do wish
people would be a little less 'ad hominem' in their argument styles,
however.

I'd be more concerned if hackers didn't argue for their own point of
view/code/methodology.

Gavin