Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 05 Jun 1997 00:20:57 -0700
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
To:        "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@freebsd.org>
Cc:        committers@freebsd.org, ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ports/comms/hylafax 
Message-ID:  <12179.865495257@time.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 04 Jun 1997 18:21:10 %2B0200." <199706041621.SAA02899@desk.jhs.no_domain> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
OK, I'll bell this cat..

First, there were too many mailing lists on the command line,
especially when committers is a functional superset, so I've trimmed
it in the interests of not mail-bombing people with multiple copies.

> Would you please consider intructing asami@cs.berkeley.edu (Satoshi Asami)
> to effect some or all (at your discretion, naturaly) :
> 	- To restore from CVS Attic 	ports/comms/hylafax/
> 	- To re-commit the new port as 	ports/comms/hylafax4/
> 	- To consult & comply with the long established mail list
> 	  <hylafax@freebsd.org> in matters relating to FreeBSD Hylafax.

First off, and just to clear this up in order to avoid future
misunderstanding, we don't really "instruct" people to do things so
much as we make strong suggestions, so it's not appropriate to ask
core to take such direct action, and certainly not in the first round
before any serious degree of intractability has been demonstrated by
the "offending party."

Ask us to argue your case for you and that's something else, something
quite different from asking us to hit somebody with the big stick.

Second, Satoshi is also the portsmeister, and that means that the rest
of us have agreed to abide by his decisions where ports are concerned.
He does a hell of a lot of work on ports, in turn, and we consider
that a more than reasonable trade.  If he's got the responsibility
then he should also have the "executive oversight", after all, and if
anyone "instructs" anyone in matters of the ports collection then it's
the other way around.

Finally, with regard to the hylafax mailing list, I do hope that you
would not consider that an adequate replacement for subscription to
the ports mailing list by all the interested parties.  Your hylafax
mailing list was created to facilitate out-of-band communication on
hylafax, much as the inn, pine, jdk and other such users have their
own special mailing lists to discuss matters pertaining directly to
their areas of interest.  With close to 1000 ports, I would never
expect to have to inform anyone but ports@freebsd.org in the event of
ANY ports change.  It is simply not realistic to expect someone
mucking with the freebsd ports collection to keep track of potentially
hundreds of mailing lists, and so the rule goes like this:

	If you want to change a given port, you must first clear it
	with the MAINTAINER and with ports@freebsd.org, should that
	be different from the MAINTAINER.  No other communication
	is required or expected.

If you were the listed maintainer for hylafax then yes, Satoshi should
have sought your approval.  By the same token, anyone unable to take
action on a port due to time constraints should also expect to be
either removed or overridden as the maintainer if a reasonable time
has passed and they've now turned into a bottleneck.  I do not know if
this was true in your case, but just to note that maintainer status
can certainly be revoked for anyone not able/willing to keep it
up-to-date.  In any case, even if there were an issue with this, it
should have been handled as an entirely separate issue and so long as
you were legitimately listed as the maintainer, you should have been
consulted and given veto power over the move.

Given all of this, I would _suggest_ that Satoshi do as requested and
commit the new hylafax port under hylafax4 / resurrect the old, as
suggested.  If Satoshi wants to ignore this suggestion then that's
still his right, however, as the portsmeister.  That's what being the
portsmeister means.

					Jordan



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?12179.865495257>