GitLab and BuildBot

Thu Feb 9 07:24:57 UTC 2023

Hello Chris,

On 2023-02-08 23:35, Chris Johns wrote:
> On 8/2/2023 8:04 pm, Christian MAUDERER wrote:
>> On 2023-02-07 23:37, Chris Johns wrote:
>>> On 7/2/2023 9:31 pm, Christian MAUDERER wrote:
>>>> On 2023-02-07 07:03, Chris Johns wrote:
>>>>> On 30/1/2023 10:12 pm, Christian MAUDERER wrote:
>>>> That shouldn't be a pure decision by the one who pays for the work but one that
>>>> is (in the optimal case) discussed and specified in the tickets.
>>>
>>> I did not know that was happening. I am sorry if you think it is and if I gave
>>> you that impression.
>>
>> There have been relatively new tickets that changed the status from
>> "needs-funding" to "funded" nearly without delay. That was a bit surprising for me.
>>
>> It seems that the tickets are still updated based on feedback so that is fine
>> and it's great that someone funded them. It just would have been nice if there
>> would have been some announcement for two or three days like "Someone wants to
>> fund the tickets 1, 2 and that part of 4 exactly like they are written now. If
>> there are big objections with the direction, please speak up now."
> 
> I have never seen EB, your employer, make such an announcement about private
> commercial in confidence contracts in this way and I would never expect EB to do
> that so I think it is outrageous you think you can ask this here like this. The
> funding is a private commercial agreement Amar has and it is no different to the
> ones your employer makes. Any questions need to be directed to Amar directly but
> I suggest the questions should be along of the lines of what you can fund.

Seems that I exaggerated too much. It's a tendency that I have sometimes 
as an attempt to be descriptive. I'm sorry if that I haven't been more 
careful in my choice of words.

Of course, it's not relevant for the list whether it's paid or not and 
who is paying. It doesn't have to have any special form either.

But announcements for changes to the devel list are not unusual in 
general. For bigger changes it's often done before the change. Sometimes 
vague but it's at least announced (Example: New build system [1], [2], 
...). If someone wants to know more or objects the planned changes he 
can speak up in these mail threads and concerns can be discussed and in 
the worst case a change can be rejected entirely.

For smaller changes everyone just sends patches to the list that are 
usually accepted and sometimes rejected if someone objects.

For infrastructure changes, a patch review after it is done isn't 
possible. So these are more the big kind of changes that should be 
announced with at least a few days time for someone to object or 
discuss. Tickets are nice but they are not very visible.

> 
> This list is open and public for the project and its community and I will not
> tolerant any commercial activity of any type.
> 

Sorry, shouldn't have mentioned "Someone wants to fund ...". The tickets 
already had something similar in the comments, so I didn't think that 
someone would object as long as it is an anonymous "Someone wants to 
fund ..." and not "Company X wants to fund ...".

> Regarding the tickets, there are many cases over the years of those providing
> services performing services internally, raising tickets and committing changes.
> I see no issue here and I am fine with that continuing to happen.
> 
> Finally, my understanding of the funded tickets is most of the work is to
> rebuild the servers to be current and capable of running modern CI systems, what
> ever that ends up being.
> 

Maintenance tasks that keep the systems running are fine without an 
announcement. These are a lot of great work that happens behind the 
scenes. But these tasks don't change how a user can access the system. 
It's great if someone decides to make that work visible too so that 
everyone can at least say a "thank you", but it's not necessary.

For tasks that change something fundamental, some public review time 
would be nice at least a few days before the work starts. Like said 
above: I would see that similar to review time for every patch that is 
more or less a suggestion to change something.

I haven't seen that announcement and review time for the tickets that 
are already funded. Maybe I missed it and if that is the case it's fully 
my fault and I'm sorry that I even started the discussion. On the other 
hand all currently funded tickets fall into the category "necessary 
maintenance task" so I clearly overreacted to even mention it.

Regarding the commercial aspect: Of course an announcement doesn't have 
to happen before a contract is closed - that is something between the 
two companies or individuals that close the contract. But like you said 
multiple times yourself: It's not a contract that the RTEMS project 
closes but one between two unrelated legal entities. So it's still 
possible that a community members might object and in the worst case 
block the change.

Just to make that clear again: Except for some details (that we are 
currently discussing in various mail threads) I'm really happy with what 
is happening so let's hope that no one objects the new infrastructure.

Best regards

Christian

>> At the moment I don't need all tickets from my point of view. But there are no
>> tickets that I would see as a problem. So again: I'm happy that our system will
>> get better.
> 
> Thank you the positive feed back, it is appreciated. The process is not perfect
> and what can be achieved is limited but things are moving and changing and that
> is encouraging.
> 
> Chris

[1] https://lists.rtems.org/pipermail/devel/2019-September/055742.html
[2] https://lists.rtems.org/pipermail/devel/2019-October/055809.html

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