On Sun, Nov 11 2018, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 07:18:00PM -0800, Frank Rowand wrote:
>> OK.  So the update was done in an opaque closed fashion, which involved
>> soliciting input from some unknown fraction of the community.  Do I
>> understand that correctly?
>> 
>> And I think it would be fair to say that the people who created the
>> update were probably aware of the comments of a much larger group of
>> people who had participated in the threads on various email lists,
>> and also I suspect the comments threads on the related lwn articles.
>> So likely also based on input from a (probably) larger fraction of
>> the community who had been willing to publicly comment.
>> 
>> So based on community input, but the document was not reviewed by the
>> broader community, or accepted by the broader community.
>
> "Community" is a very slippery term.  I will note that there were
> *many* people who were participating on the threads, sometimes in very
> non-constructive or in a downright toxic fashion, who had zero commits
> in recent years.  In some cases, it was zero commits, *ever*.  I
> recall doing the research on one prolific author and found that while
> he did contribute the kernel, it was 3 or 4 commits... ~5 years
> ago... to a driver.
>
> And then there was one person who admitted that while he was just a
> user, he insisted he had a right to weigh in the issue.  They
> certainly have the right to have that belief, of course.  Whether or
> not maintainers are obliged to cater to people with those beliefs is a
> very different question, however.
>
> There seems to be an assumption that a open, public discussion will
> always give you the best review.

Maybe not, but it does help create a sense of community.  It encourages
people to feel valued and included.

The new CoC suggests that our standards include

* Focusing on what is best for the community

Is having a perfect CoC best for the community?  Or is having an open
process best, even when it produces a suboptimal result?

NeilBrown