[coreboot] [RFC] Proposal for policy for changing the development guidelines

[Martin Roth]

I meant to send this to the mailing list on Saturday, but ended up just
sending it to Paul by accident.

Paul,
  This thread quickly followed one point that you commented on, but
has so far not touched much on one of your other issues.  This is the
issue of leadership of the coreboot community.  You might want to look
at Stefan's blog post "on coreboot leadership" from May of last year -
http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/05/11/on-coreboot-leadership/

The way that I read it is that anyone is welcome to contribute ideas
and opinions.  Stefan may poll people for their opinions at times as
well.  What I don't read in that blog post is anything about the
coreboot project being a democracy.  I think that Stefan makes it
pretty clear that the coreboot project has a leader, even though he
believes in a hands-off approach.

If people think that there are things that need to be discussed, I've
found that Stefan, Ron and the rest are very welcoming of reasonable
and constructive discussion.

Regarding announcements of changes to policy, maybe something could be
set up so that changes to certain wiki pages would automatically be
posted to the mailing list.

Please note that these are just my own personal thoughts on these
subjects, and are in no way trying to state any official coreboot
policy.

Martin


On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 11:30 AM, Alex Gagniuc <mr.nuke.me at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 2:24 PM, Stefan Reinauer
> <stefan.reinauer at coreboot.org> wrote:
>>
>> That is a really surprising statement coming from you, Alex, as you and I
>> have discussed this very topic in person several times
>
> And as I have said in those very same discussions, decisions about
> coreboot shold be done publicly. You're also portraying a distorted
> picture of what was actually discussed, but it was still a private
> conversation and has no bearing towards what Paul pointed out.
>
> Going back to Paul's proposal, he noted that an official project
> guideline had been modified with neither public mail discussion, nor
> community oversight. This was not a "minor typo fix" or
> "clarification". I count three different changes which were made this
> way. And I think Paul nailed it with his proposal.
>
> I fully support Paul's proposal.
>
> On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 6:54 PM, Martin Roth <gaumless at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There was significant discussion in several
>> meetings about the reasons for and against standardizing on AT&T
>> syntax.
>
> As I've explained above, private conversations are not the proper
> forum to make decisions related to coreboot. I realize you and others
> involved are wearing two hats, and sometimes it's hard to tell which
> hat you're wearing, either for you, or observers. Please consider the
> image portrayed on your employer, when a group of its employees
> unilaterally discusses, changes, then enforces rules in a public
> project. I think Paul's proposal fixes this issue.
>
>> If you have a reason for using Intel syntax that is really more
>> persuasive than keeping the asm code in the project consistent, feel
>> free to state it.
>
> While I have a lot to say of the matter, this is not the appropriate
> place. This discussion is about a change to a policy, not a
> development guideline. Let's focus on what Paul is saying here.
>
> Alex