[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Mr. Rylander, we have a problem.

[Jason Stephenson]

Mike,

You don't pay enough attention when someone is trying to tell you
something.

Yesterday, I was very angry about Launchpad bug 1154766
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1154766).  I did not appreciate that
the first email I received from Launchpad had a "Fix Committed"
status.  I objected to this fact rather vociferously on the bug and in
IRC.  My point was that no one outside of ESI had a chance to even
look at this new feature before it had gone into master.

You took this as a complaint that *I* had not had a chance to look at
it.  You seemed to imply that this was a contest about who had more
commits, or something.

While your point that very few people are reviewing other people's
commits and that many branches have sat for months with no apparent
action on them is well taken.  That is, however, beside the point of
my argument.

It was agreed at the January developers' meeting that new features
should wait a week before going into master.  This was in order to
give others in the community a chance to look at, to ask questions
about, and to comment on the new functionality or its implementation.

You seem to be under the mistaken apprehension that no one in the
community outside of Equinox is looking at Launchpad.  Thomas and I do
regularly look at code posted via Launchpad.  In the vast majority of
cases, we have no opinion on the code or don't feel competent to judge
the code on its merits.  (The latter is most often true with
acquisitions and serials since our consortium does not use these
features.)  I do, however, regularly update my development branches
with branches posted from Launchpad.  When I have the chance to test
something to my satisfaction, I will sign off and commit it.  I also
load acquisitions and serials branches on this server for Kathy
Lussier to review.  In fact, she was looking at all of the
acquisitions improvements branches that went into master yesterday,
plus a couple of others.  Perhaps we are not fast enough for you, but
we are looking at this work.  We do have other responsibilities, you
know.

You also mistakenly asserted that development is Thomas's primary role
at MVLC.  It is not.  He spends most of his day resolving internal
issues for our members and making sure that our servers continue to
run smoothly.  Development of Evergreen is only a secondary part of
his job, if even that.  He produces the volume of code that he does
because he enjoys programming enough to work on Evergreen on his own
time at home.  You made your assumption and you accused Thomas of not
helping the community based solely on the commit statistics from the
last year that you posted to Launchpad yesterday
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1154267/comments/2).

Looking at these statistics, I think you will have to admit that I am
probably the most balanced of the committers when it comes to number
of commits of my own that go in compared to the number of commits of
others that I push.  I am just about 50/50 in that regard.  Further,
if you look at who the authors are of the branches that I commit, the
vast majority are from Equinox developers.  I also push more commits
from non-committers than I have committed of Thomas's code.

Thomas and I have an agreement to push as little of each others' code
as possible precisely to avoid contentious arguments such as this with
the rest of the community.

Furthermore, I cannot count the number of times that we have told our
members--the people who pay our salaries!--that they cannot have some
feature they desired because we knew that the community would not like
it, or would not like the way that our members want us to implement
it.  The community is larger than MVLC, or ESI and her customers.  The
community is larger than C/W MARS, NOBLE, and MassLNC.  The community
includes Indiana, Georgia PINES, SC LENDS, MELCAT, Bibliomation,
Laurentian University, Mohawk College, TADL, and a whole host of
others.  We do our best to consider everyone's needs as well as we
understand them before we undertake any development work, and if we
are unsure we ask, via IRC, Launchpad, and/or email.

Hence, the desire for the waiting period.  Many of the above have
developers either on staff or under contract.  They can look at
Launchpad and can comment on development.  However, when code is
pushed and bugs practically created in the Fix Committed status, none
of them have the opportunity to look, to comment, nor to test the code
if they so desire.  This, Mr. Rylander, is the reasone for my
expression of anger in IRC and on Launchpad yesterday.  No one outside
of Equinox was given so much as a "Hey, we're working on this," before
the code was committed to master.  This is not a personal contest
between MVLC and ESI about the number of commits.  This is about the
community, communication and respect for the same.  ESI's actions with
this new feature show a lack of regard for the community.

I understand that as 2.4 Release Manager you have some prerogatives in
this domain.  However, that title does not grant you a dictatorial
positon, and you should in fact have a greater regard for the
community as a whole in that position, and not just your company's
contractual obligations to her customers.

Finally, I want to apologize to everyone for exploding on the
Launchpad ticket and in IRC as I did yesterday.  It was unprofessional
of me and inexcusable.  I also no longer consider myself the Chief Bug
Wrangler.  I do not deserve the title, since I have not really kept up
with the duties of that position over the past several months.  If you
like, consider this a formal and final resignation from that position.


-- 
Jason Stephenson
Assistant Director for Technology Services
Merrimack Valley Library Consortium