Re: Machine maintainer veto.

["Carlos O'Donell" <carlos at redhat dot com>]

On 07/03/2015 02:20 AM, Rich Felker wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 02, 2015 at 11:51:55PM -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
>> Community,
>>
>> I have attempted to clarify what has always been in effect.
>> The machine maintainers have some level of veto for what goes
>> into their machine port. This allows some amount of control over
>> hardware support and ABI/API additions and removals.
>>
>> The key issue is to balance the project goals and the needs of
>> the users of the particular machine. To do that effectively the
>> machine maintainers have to have some level of veto to add or
>> remove things to the machine they know and understand best.
>>
>> https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/MAINTAINERS#Machine_maintainers
> 
> I know I don't have any standing to change it, but I just want to
> express a sentiment that I think this is bad policy. I can go into the
> details of why if anyone is interested.

I am absolutely interested in hearing the details.

I am not documenting anything new, machine maintainers have altered
their machine files as they see fit and with respect to the two key
responsibilities they hold.

Where the machine maintenance touches generic code or other parts of
glibc, or where the community wishes to enact a cross-machine change
we get into obvious gray zones, but that's life.

To date I have not seen the machine maintainers abuse this veto, but
at times it has been done.

Cheers,
Carlos.