Re: Fwd: [ExtUtils-MakeMaker] the future of EUMM's developmentmodel(#242)

David Golden wrote:
>     BINGOS does many CPAN releases for PTG modules for a number of years
>     now but he rarely writes code. In PAUSE, there is a concept of
>     owner, and comaint. Do these have relevance to who is the owner of a
>     PTG module?
>
>
> I would distinguish PTG the Github organization from "toolchain
> maintainers" more generally/socially.  PTG is a facility for
> collaboration.  It reflects the social collaboration agreements among
> people who contribute to toolchain modules.
>
> The social organization is decentralized.  In recent years, venues like
> #toolchain and the QA hackathons and this list (and sometimes p5p) have
> been where differences get debated and courses of action set.

There is a group of people who have official power, people who are 
trusted with limited power, and a group of very interested members of 
the public. It is a venn diagram. Who is in PTG with limited power, who 
is an admin of PTG, who is on IRC in #toolchain, who is on SO/PMonks, 
who posts in GH/RT, and who shows up to QAH, are all different 
overlapping circles. The social organization is decentralized, but PAUSE 
absolutely isn't, you mention things supporting in the next paragraph 
and 3rd/4th/5th paragraph quotes. You (alone out of 6?) seem to support 
the idea that the PAUSE releaser is the owner of a module, not the 
limited power 30 PTG members, or the 6 PTG admins (and you xdg are one 
of the 6).

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
>     I find any "Author" section in PTG module pod to be years or a
>     decade out of date. Is the Pod's author the "owner" of the module
>     and still responsible for it even though it is under PTG care?
>
>
> The author section accumulates.  I personally consider the last person
> to ship to CPAN to be the person "on the hook" for any given module
> unless they specifically say they are stepping down from that role.
> (Ideally, by making someone else the primary maintainer on PAUSE.)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>     If a PTG module is always released by one person, and nearly every
>     commit is by one person, page after page on GH, year after year,
>     XDG's modules for example, it is obvious that he, and not the PTG
>     collective is the owner of that.
>
>
> By putting my modules on PTG, I'm explicitly taking myself out of the
> critical path for their development.

I dont know why you mean by "critical path". Do you mean that you will 
defer to the community over sub names, sub arguments, POD, module deps, 
and tabs vs spaces instead of your own opinion?

If you spend the hours responding to tickets, writing patches, and 
making CPAN tarballs, other PTG people will still wait for your 
response, instead of pushing to the repo, and upload a new CPAN alpha 
tarball within 90 seconds.

>     When a module is "donated" to PTG, is the donator still the owner of
>     the module, or is PTG collectively now the owner and author of the
>     module, and original owner can not be blamed for anything that
>     happens under PTG development model?
>
>
> PTG (the org) is a vehicle to facilitate collaboration.  By putting it
> there, an author is inviting any of the PTG members to hack on it.  It
> doesn't mean anything about "ownership".
>
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
> In my opinion, the only place of record for ownership is PAUSE.  If
> there is one person to look to, that's the person listed as primary
> maintainer.  Co-maints are also responsible parties, though many are
> inactive in practice.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>     What are the responsibilities of a PTG member who cuts a CPAN tarball?
>     Are they a cron job whose only purpose is to bump version numbers
>     and verify the changelog contains a new version number, or are they
>     required to review the git history (and perhaps GH issues/PRs) since
>     the last CPAN release?
>
>
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
> As I said already, don't think of it as "PTG member".  The PAUSE author
> who uploads is responsible for quality.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>     Is PTG a secret society?
>
>
> PTG is a shared code repository.  What anyone says or commits doesn't
> imply any endorsement by other members.
>
*******cut********
>
>     For P5P, there is RJBS as the scapegoat, who is the scapegoat for PTG?
>
>
> The owners group are the scapegoats for the technical (and social)
> issues involved in running a shared code repository. It has nothing to
> do with the ownership of modules.
>
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
> Personally, I consider the PAUSE primary maintainer to the be the owner
> of record and thus scapegoat and no one should remain in that role
> unless they are willing to take that responsibility.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

> My answers to the following questions represent my personal opinion.
> I'm not speaking as a "PTG owner" or anything.

Again the problem is, PTG is everyone, but no one. Since governance and 
management are tough questions with not rosy answers, nobody wants to 
respond.

Leon Timmermans wrote:
>     Who has the root password to the PTG github account to add and
>     remove members from that list? I'll assume there is more than 1
person.
>
>
> Andy, Ricardo, Schwern, mst, xdg and me. I do not consider us the owners
> of PTG in any way, more like caretakers.

Unless all 6 people respond, there is no governance since 1 out of 6 
people speaking changes nothing. I'll thank leont and xdg for responding 
in detail, but they are still 2 out of 6, or 2 out of 30, or 2 out of 
40-50, depending which circle you pick as the definition of "toolchain 
gang".