Re: [HACKERS] Decision Process WAS: Increased company involvement - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

Dave,

> The group has moderators, but they exist only
> to moderate discussion on the mailing lists.  I'm not saying that
> it is bad that Postgres is not democratic.  Postgres is a totally
> different kind of beast than Boost, and probably benefits from
> having a few people ultimately decide its fate.  But let's call a
> spade a spade and not pretend that contributors don't have to get
> buy-in from core.

Hmmm ... why does everyone assume that Core does more than what we do?  I
think that most people would be surprised by how *little* traffic there is on
the pgsql-core mailing list.

Core decides on releases, and approves committers.  Occasionally we'll handle
something which requires confidentiality, like a security issue or a new
corporate participant.

The committers, who do *not* have exact overlap with Core (for example, Neil
is a committer but not on Core, and I am on Core but not a committer)
actually commit patches, so the participation of *one* of them is required to
get something in to the core code.  Materially, what's accepted is decided
through open discussion on the pgsql-hackers list; even Tom brings up his
patches for discussion before commit, and I'd defy you to point to even one
patch which was accepted by consensus on pgsql-hackers and not committed.

As you've already observed, if Tom doesn't like something it's very unlikely
to get through.    But that's true for a lot of major contributors; the
consensus process we use provides ample opportunities to veto and slender
opportunities to pass.   Go back in the archives to 7.4 development, and you
will see Peter exercising his veto a lot, rather than Tom -- and Peter was
not a Core team member at the time.  From my perspective, this is a good
thing for a database system which can get easily broken by an ill-considered
patch.  It's *good* for us to be development-conservative.

So there is an "insider group", but it's the group of major contributors.  Tom
has the loudest voice because he writes the most code.   The fact that Tom,
Bruce or Peter's veto is often as far as a proposal goes is simply because
most of the pgsql-hackers subscribers simply don't involve themselves in the
process unless it's one of their own pet features.  And the important thing
about the group of major contributors is that membership is open.

This goes beyond new proposals.   Just the other day Bruce was lamenting the
fact that despite having a number of committers, nobody other than him seems
willing to work out the conflicts and get pending patches into acceptable
shape for backend integration -- some patches stayed in the queue for months
while he was out.    This is bad; it bottlenecks us and makes Bruce and Tom
the de-facto arbiters of acceptance because they personally have to adjust
and commit submissions.

If people want the acceptance process to be more "democratic", then those
people have to be willing to do the work of full participation.   This means
arguing and doing research on the hackers list, even for proposals that don't
personally benefit you; helping debug and/or test patches to get rid of their
problems; and ultimately, becoming a major contributor and then a committer
yourself so that you can take over part of Bruce's workload.

When this system has broken down it's specifically because people on the
-hackers list were lazy or distracted and ignored other people's patch
proposals, allowing one member's (whether Tom or anyone else) reflexive veto
to stand without challenge.  And by failing to champion the usefulness of
proposals.  I know that some of Joe's proposals were unfairly killed simply
because nobody on -hackers spoke up for them, leading Tom and others to
believe that they weren't popular or needed.

Personally, I tend to think that one of the several things fundamentally
broken in the US electoral system is that there is no relationship between
political participation, voting, and authority.   I don't see any reason to
replicate those mistakes with our project.    So if your definition of
"democracy" is "everyone has an equal voice regardless of participation
level", then thank the gods we're not a "democracy".

(P.S. on a complete tangent, "call a spade a spade" is actually a racist
expression originating in the reconstruction-era South.   "spade" does not
mean garden tool but is a derogatory  slang term for black people.  It's an
expression I avoid for that reason.  I don't expect anyone to have known
this, but now you do.)

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco