> I don't want to upset anybody for any reason. I regret that my words
> have upset you, but I think that they were misinterpreted in a way
> that I couldn't possibly have predicted. The particular aspect of
I strongly object to that. It's pretty obvious to me that addressing
people in third person is very offending.
And using the third person to avoid making things personal, and properly represent one's role as a representative as opposed to an individual, is something at least two of us consider to be "professional". If others taking on a professional/formal tone with you is offending I politely suggest you need to at least cut them some slack when you haven't informed them of this previously. Cultural differences happen in both directions.
> How could anybody on the RMT judge what was going on sensibly? There
> was *zero* information from you (the original committer, our point of
> contact) about an item that is in a totally unfamiliar part of the
> code to every other committer. We were effectively forced to make
> very
> conservative assumptions about the deadline. I think that it's very
> likely that this could have been avoided if only you'd engaged to
> some
> degree -- if you had said it was a short deadline then we'd likely
> have taken your word for it, as the relevant subject matter expert
> and
> committer in charge of the item. But we were never given that choice.
The same holds the other way round, I only understood later that you
wanted more information. Had I known that earlier, I would have gladly
given them.
There is clearly an expectation from the RMT, and at least myself, that:
"The RMT discussed this recently. We are concerned about this issue,
including how it has been handled so far.
If you're unable to resolve the issue (or at least commit time to
resolving the issue) then the RMT will call for the revert of the
original feature patch.
"
is expected to elicit a response from the comitter in a timely fashion. Really, any email sent to -hackers from the RMT about a specific commit; or even any email sent to -hackers by a core team member, is expected to be responded to in a timely manner. These teams should not be getting involved with the day-to-day operations and being responsive to them is part of the obligation of being a committer.
In hindsight probably the quoted email above should have been worded.
"If you're unable to resolve the issue, or communicate a timely plan for doing so, within the next week please revert the patch."
Making it clear that the committer should be the one performing the revert. Then, absent feedback or a revert, the second email and the RMT team performing the revert, would be appropriate.
David J.
