[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] VDD FFmpeg session and community survey

[Thilo Borgmann]

Am 22.11.18 um 22:58 schrieb Rostislav Pehlivanov:
> On Thu, 22 Nov 2018 at 19:02, Thilo Borgmann <thilo.borgmann at mail.de> wrote:
> 
>>
>> Please note that this survey is _not_ meant to be a vote about the
>> proposal. It is to
>> determine if we should actually have a refinement/vote on instantiating
>> such a
>> community committee - depending on the community's point of view.
>>
> 
> Spamming (which this would certainly be a textbook definition of) every
> subscriber ever (including those who forgot) is unacceptable.

All subscribers are per definition interested in FFmpeg development. 
I don't see how this should be spam in general to this audience.


> +Further on it is to impose any sanctions related to violations of the code of
>> +conduct only if these incidents are brought up to its attention from directly
>> +involved parties of such an incident.
>>
>> Violations should be limited to publicly logged IRC channels or the ML.
> Otherwise without proof this will end up as a "but they said" situation.

Agree.


> ++ at subheading <http://ffmpeg.org/mailman/listinfo/ffmpeg-devel>
> Committee members
>> +
>> +The community committee consists of three elected individuals. Committee members are
>> +elected for a period of one year and are automatically removed from the committee after
>> +that period. Reelection of committee members for the following period is possible.
>>
>> Three members is far too low and would be prone to bias. 5 or 7 would be
> better.

A question I discussed with many others. I don't have a strong opinion, 3/5/7 have always been the options. Feel free to put that to discussion again.


>> +
>> +If for any reason a current member of the committee wishes to leave the committee, the
>> +whole committee is to be reelected. No former committee members having left the committee
>> +on their own wish can be a candidate for the successor committee.
>>
>> That last sentence is random.

Not quite. It prevents "blocking" attempts by stepping back and getting elected again. The whole committee is to be voted upon again to prevent biasing attempts within the committee. Or I might see why you think this could not happen.


> +The vote has to implement a direct, free, equal and secret election.
>> +The results are to be publicly available.
>> +The election should be completed not later than the end of the ongoing period.
>> +Any community member can call on itself or any other person to be a candidate for an election.
>>
>> What if a majority of the committee is biased and bans everyone they
> disagree with to take over the project? They certainly could.
> What if the committee's decision is something the majority of the
> developers disagree with?

Nothing prevents the community to release the committee it instantiated. A community vote on (this or whatever) is not object to the powers of the committee.


> This is why I'm against formalizing such prodecures. They're too inflexible
> and absolute, and end up being abused or overused (like videolan's weekly
> temporary bannings I've heard of).

Didn't heard of these by now. However, in discussing with people, it revealed there are two ways to go with that. Either, you give a set of rules and define everything in these and can't handle anything else. Or, you set one rule to be <put wanted behavior here> and have each thing in relation to that.

Experience says, the first possibility comes with people navigating on the bleeding edge of the rules exploiting every grey zone there might be. The second comes with people having an other interpretation of the "one rule" in contrast to the committee.
Well, I prefer the second way. But this question you can also put to discussion again.



> Furthermore why do you bring this up now at all? We haven't had accidents
> of this nature in quite some time. In fact the last time it was the ML
> admin's random incorrect decision to block a discussion which ended up
> being a problem that everyone disagreed with. And that was 11 months ago.

You have been at VDD, Rostislav. We had this session, people made this a topic, I agreed on summing up and sending it to the list. I've not stumbled across such incidents lately, too. However, I by far do not read every mail here or do watch IRC at all - people still having this impression are a good enough reason for me.

Personally, even if these accidents would have ceased to happen - history tells us we might use a better way of dealing with it, since CoC violations are an ever repeating thing to happen.

-Thilo