Re: [Gdbheads] proposed change to GDB maintainership rules

[Michael Snyder]

Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> David Carlton <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > On a tangential note - you and/or Andrew (I can't remember, and am too
> > lazy to sift through my archives) have presented Eric Bachalo as
> > somehow leading this.  As far as I have seen, that impression is
> > entirely inaccurate.  He was kind enough to arrange for our phone
> > conversations, but his participation in our discussions (whether via
> > phone or e-mail) has been minimal.  I have no reason to believe that
> > he has been doing anything other than what any good manager should do:
> > he has tried to help those working under him resolve a difficulty that
> > they were having.  But, to the best of my knowledge, he hasn't pressed
> > them to do so, he hasn't guided their actions, he hasn't done anything
> > that could possibly be construed as being for the benefit of Red Hat
> > instead of the GDB community as a whole.
>
>
> I know Eric, and I like him, but I would have to say, based on this,
> that he called this one wrong.  A good manager should resolve
> difficulties directly; that's his or her job.  In this case, speaking
> directly to Andrew, and probably Andrew's boss (whoever that is) would
> probably have been the best step.  A good manager should not encourage
> private discussions aimed at solving a personnel problem, at least not
> for more than a day or two.
>
> And I have to say that the idea of one group within Red Hat planning
> how to work around problems with somebody else at Red Hat, and
> bringing in people outside of Red Hat before speaking directly to the
> person at Red Hat, well, that just has me shaking my head in
> disbelief.

That's good, because you shouldn't believe it.

It's true that we see four Red Hat engineers here, having a problem
with another Red Hat engineer.  One might well ask why Red Hat could
not work the problem out internally -- if one didn't notice how many
non-red-hat maintainers seemed to be experiencing the same difficulty.

In fact, you should be glad that Red Hat management was not able
to solve the problem by taking Andrew aside and telling him to
change the way he performed his gdb maintainer role.  If Red Hat
had been able to do that -- FSF would really have a problem.

As for Eric, I don't feel as if I should go into great detail,
but I think he did everything he could do, including the things
you've suggested.  Ultimately, this is not a Red Hat problem,
it's a gdb maintainers problem.