Takeover by reviewer

Christopher Aillon caillon at redhat.com
Tue Feb 19 22:35:06 UTC 2008


On 02/19/2008 10:50 AM, Axel Thimm wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> there is a takeover by a reviewer of a package submitted by myself:
> 
> Original package
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=250970
> Takeover
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=346171
> 
> The reviewer has been stalling review, setting new issues some
> justified, some being simply false with me trying to satisfy the
> requirements. The final absurd refusal was against allowing for RHEL
> compatibily.
> 
> His package request has been approved and even made it into CVS. I'd
> like to ask for the board to check this issue and transfer the
> owenership back to the original submitter. Note that when the reviewer
> made himself the package submitter I had filed into the vacations page
> that I was on relocation.
> 
> Also note that I'm probably the closest that comes to an upstream -
> Upstream is Conexant via Hauppauge with me having designed the
> licensing going through approval by Conexant, Hauppauge and Intel (the
> latter for their legal department allowing me to base the license on
> theirs). It took me almost a year to get the licenses approved, so
> they can enter Fedora and now I have to deal with hostile takeovers?

Sigh.

So it looks like there are actually two disputes:

* Packaging dispute over the RHEL compat stuff, which should be raised 
with and resolved by FESCO.[1]

* Ownership dispute.  Note: This is my personal opinion may not reflect 
the board's collective opinion nor the opinion of how i would feel if I 
were in your shoes: I'm trying to be fair, not vengeful.

I think that you have some right as the original submitter and with all 
your work on the package both in Fedora and upstream to feel estranged 
and want to maintain the package.  I think it should be considered a 
no-brainer.

However, it is also clear that kwizart wants to work on the package.  We 
want people in Fedora to be able to work on things they care about, and 
while the events that led to this mail were unfortunate, the underlying 
fact is that both of you care about the package, although for a 
different set of reasons.  You want to support compat back to various 
RHELs while he doesn't.

Typically, we encourage co-maintenance for this sort of thing and I 
think it would be great if you could resolve any personal disputes you 
may have between you two and work out an agreement for co-maintenance 
with the understanding that if there are any further disputes (which I 
hope won't be a common occurrence) they should be escalated to FESCO or 
the Board as appropriate...

I also realize that it's possible you two just can't get along, and we'd 
need to revisit this issue, but I hope it's possible to try and we'll 
cross that bridge if we need to.  (Are we already at that point?)  :-\

One other thing, I'd encourage you to help figure out with the FPC/FESCo 
how we can avoid situations like this in the future.  E.g. should there 
be a bullet point in the package review guidelines to look for prior 
review requests?  What happens then?  Etc...




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