Re: [Gdbheads] proposed change to GDB maintainership rules

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ian Lance Taylor <address@hidden>
> Date: 29 Jan 2004 21:40:39 -0500
> 
> You are now stating a completely different and seemingly unrelated
> problem, which might be written down as ``Andrew [Cagney] gets his way
> whenever conflicts arise, and he is not always right.''
> 
> Do other people on this mailing list agree that this is a problem?
> Have I stated it correctly, or is there some more precise way to
> describe the problem?

I'd say you expressed it too extremely.  IMHO, it's not that Andrew
gets his way whenever conflicts arise, it's just that some discussions
never end in _any_ conclusion whatsoever.  They just die out.  And
they die because Andrew does not always encourage compromises to reach
solutions that would leave everybody at least partially happy.

> I would say that consensus is a conflict resolution mechanism if there
> is mutual respect and trust, and if everybody approaches problems in a
> spirit of fairness.

I think you forgot an important requirement of a successful conflict
resolution: the utmost importance of _getting_ to some resolution of a
problem.  If the importance of solving the original problem, the one
which triggered a submitted patch, is somehow lost in the course of
discussions, then other goals fill the void, but these other goals not
necessarily benefit GDB maintenance.

In other words, mutual respect and trust, and the spirit of fairness
are not going to do their job if the discussion is not driven by the
urge to solve the original problem somehow.

> As a past tyrant myself, I believe that tyranny is generally the best
> solution, but it has an important precondition, which is that the
> tyrant is almost always right.  When that is not the case, or when
> people do not believe that it is the case, then tyranny fails.  To
> govern requires the consent of the governed.  Evidently people are not
> willing to accept Andrew as a tyrant, either because he is not almost
> always right, or because people do not believe that he is almost
> always right.

In my assessment, the problem is that sometimes Andrew does not strive
hard enough to solve the original problem.  That is, leaving the
things as they are is acceptable to Andrew if no simlpe consensus can
be reached.