On Wed, 3 Feb 2016 08:44:32 -0700
Jerry James <loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Several people have said something similar lately, and it worries
me.
I understand that we're trying to combat the hostility some packagers
show when somebody does something to "their" packages, but I'm
concerned that we may have swung the pendulum too far the other way.
I foresee two problems:
1. Demotivating packagers
I know a number of companies have experimented with "ownership-free"
models of code development, but they are able to offer incentives that
Fedora cannot offer, such as money and kudos offered in front of
coworkers. What motivates volunteer packagers to do what they do?
I'd like to hear from a few packagers on this topic.
What motivates me is pride in my work, and recognition of that good
work by others. If I'm just one packager in a big cloud of packagers,
and none of us is really responsible for anything ... well, that's
quite demotivating.
But thats not how I look at it least. Instead of being one package who
says "My packages are great", you can say "My packages are great, and
other people help me when they can, and I help them out and our
community is great". It's not that no one is responsible for anything,
it's that everyone is responsible for everything. If you see some way
you can help, you do, and you don't stop with "oh, thats not my
package, I'll let the owner deal with it"
I am the primary point of contact for a few dozen packages where I
have done all of the packaging work, all of the reporting of bugs
upstream, all of the arguing with upstream to do something about
sticky license situations, all of the handling of bug reports. I'm
sure the same is true for many other packagers. People feel ownership
of what they work on. This is human nature. I fear that by denying
human nature with this "those aren't your packages" mantra, we will
suck the joy out of packaging work and see packagers less willing to
do that work.
I don't think anyone wants to take that away. Instead we just want to
avoid the "These packages are mine mine mine, and no one can touch
them" when in fact you are just stewarding them for Fedora.
2. Motivating responsibility-free drive-by modifications
If nobody owns any packages, then who is responsible for fixing
package problems? I think the reason some packagers react with
hostility to others changing "their" packages is that we have a
handful of provenpackagers who make incorrect changes to packages and
then walk away, without sticking around to fix the problems they
caused with their incorrect changes. I've got two recent examples of
this. I won't use any names, because my purpose is not to point
fingers.
It's not that nobody owns any packages, it's that we all do.
....snip cases of bad provenpackager behavior....
If I send these two provenpackagers a somewhat hostile email, are
you
going to blame me? I have no problem with most provenpackager
changes. In general, they have an obvious purpose and save me the
work of making the same change myself. But changes like the ones
above make more work for me, work that could have been avoided if the
provenpackager in question had just bothered to make some attempt, any
attempt, to contact me first.
Well, yes, because I don't think hostile email is ever a good idea. :)
But did you manage to talk to either of these provenpackagers and hear
back from them?
I think we need to ask ourselves, as a project, what behaviors we want
to motivate and what behaviors we want to demotivate in our packagers.
I think we need to take human nature, flawed as it is, into account
when doing so. I fear that this "nobody owns any packages" mantra is
not providing the motivations and demotivations that we really want.
Perhaps we can explain it better by saying "everyone owns all
packages" ?
kevin