[FFmpeg-devel] [ANNOUNCE] upcoming vote: extra members for GA

[Anton Khirnov]

Quoting Michael Niedermayer (2023-11-09 17:21:12)
> On Thu, Nov 09, 2023 at 01:21:13PM +0100, Anton Khirnov wrote:
> > As far as I can tell, the voter list in the last vote should be the same
> > as the GA from 2020, except for the extra members whose voting rights
> > expire after 2 years.
> > 
> > Do you dispute that? 
> 
> There are at least 3 issues here
> 
> * The first and maybe the biggest, is that our vote superviser can reply to
>   mails within 20min (like in this thread here) but is not replying to a simple
>   question within days where the list of voters comes from he used and how it
>   relates to the 2020 GA. It gives one the feeling he has some sort of
>   difficulty with awnsering that question
>   you took a guess here and replied, and i appreciate that. But really JB
>   choose this list and also the one in 2020. Only he can explain where these
>   lists come from and how they relate.

JB did explain where the list comes from [1] - it was generated by the
script that is now in our tree. Nobody disputed it in 2020.

> * I know for a fact that at least zane was not in the 2020 GA as i talked
>   with him and i know he did cast a vote in 2023 because again he told me.
>   So even if you partially apply the rules these lists do not match

Zane had 30 commits in July 2020, so he SHOULD have been on the list. If
he wasn't, then it was a mistake in 2020.

> * The 2nd issue is that there are rules how to change the GA over time
>   like that after 2 years there needs to a confirmation AND that the
>   other members represent the "active" developers in the last 36 months.
>   I can see an argument to leave the 2020 GA untouched and use it as is
>   I can also see an argument to update it, and exactly this was done in a
>   vote in 2021 by JB. Now we are here trying the 3rd variant of applying
>   only half the rules.
>   But whats more so, we actually are not. What you are doing here is
>   looking at what happened and trying to rationalize it, trying to find
>   an explanation for the list. Not stating upfront what this list is
>   IMO this is not acceptable for a vote. Uhm we found this list, lets see
>   where that might have come from ....

To be honest, it very much seems to me that you are trying to bikeshed
the process to death. Yes, it is imperfect, but that is to be expected
given we've only used it a few times so far, and the last time was over
2 years ago. What we are doing here is trying to clarify the rules so
that we actually can vote with some regularity.

In the vote we just had, option A won its contests against B/C/D by
17/7, 23/1, and 17/7, respectively. While it is possible that the list
used was not entirely correct (also depending on
the intepretation of the rules), I see no reason to think it was
incorrect in 10 people, which is what you'd need to have a chance of
getting a different result.

[1] http://lists.ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2020-June/264732.html

-- 
Anton Khirnov