Re: gdb@gnu.org Discussion

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

Kevin Buettner wrote:
> 
> Of even greater import though is the fact that this mailing list move
> is apparently being mandated by some sort of shadow organization of
> which we know almost nothing about.  From my reading of the discussion
> that Andrew pointed out, I've learned the following:

"Shadow organization" is a rather loaded term for the GDB
steering committee, which has been mentioned on this list
on a couple occasions:

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb/1999-q2/msg00125.html

is the first reference to the idea of a steering committee, while 

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb/2000-q1/msg00205.html

is the start of a dozen-odd-message thread discussing ideas about
the committee's role in GDB.  I know there has been extensive discussion
of it within Cygnus, because I started the discussion! :-) In fact,
I think you participated in the discussion as well, although I don't
have those mail archives to quote from.

I suppose the committee seems shadowy because while the idea has been
around for some time, the organization process has been slow, and
strictly speaking, the committee doesn't officially exist yet.

>  - The mailing list that these members use to converse amongst
>    themselves is gdbheads@gnu.org.  It is apparently a private
>    list.

That's right.  In this respect we are following the GCC steering
committee practice - they also have a private list.

> I would like to know the following (for a start):
> 
>  - Who are the rest of the gdbheads?
> 
>  - What are their qualifications?  (Perhaps the various members
>    could step forward and "introduce" themselves?)
> 
>  - What is the charter of the gdbheads?

All these questions were supposed to be answered in the announcement
that RMS was preparing, when the question of what to use for contact
addresses came up, and I (unwisely, it seems :-) ) asked the sources
overseers about the plausibility of moving the GDB list before making
the announcement; with the rather tense reaction that can be seen via
the link that Andrew posted.  The best suggestion I've seen so far is
that the contact address question simply be deferred, so that RMS
can make the announcement without adding any further delays, and so
everybody can get on to the business of flaming the steering committee
directly...

>  - What was the process used to select the gdbheads?

It's been pretty much anybody who expressed interest in the steering
committee, constrained by a general desire to keep the committee from
being too large initially, and to not have a majority of the membership
be from any one company.

>  - How do the current maintainers (as listed in the MAINTAINERS file)
>    and other contributors fit into this new picture?

Since the committee is not yet responsible for GDB (that's what RMS'
announcement was supposed to inaugurate!), no decisions have been made,
but I doubt there will be much if any change in day-to-day work.  The
committee's role is more to develop consensus on difficult issues that
no single GDB hacker can decide unilaterally.  I expect the details
will be laid out in the committee's web pages, again following the
GCC model, which has worked pretty well.

I think Russ Allbery did a fine job of answering many of the implied
questions, so I'll defer to his message for those.

Stan