Xen project Mailing List

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your feedback.

Firstly, let me apologise if I have caused confusion with the form. It was not intended to be a one answer fits all within the community. Rather, it was created to give community members an option to share how they feel about the term, with the example mentioned. In the future, I want to ensure you that I have taken your feedback on board and wider context will be provided. I'll also make sure that maintainers/committers are CC'd into the threads.

The form was created as a method to understand the wider view of the community, whilst making it easier to track responses. The key takeaways here are what Stefano has addressed earlier: that we should reach a consensus quicker rather than continue what some would consider nitpicking small things.

Following the discussions above and my previous emails, we will be adding informal voting to the governance guidelines and reviewing other ways to better collaborate. Some suggestions for improvement include discussing ways in which the wider community can address their concerns, having the ability to vote, and potentially electing an arbiter or technical steering committee for similar situations. I will be sending out further communications and discussing this with the community at a later date.

In the specific example above, it's difficult in the sense that informal voting wasn't officially in the governance yet when the feedback was raised. What I would recommend in this instance is that if George and others feel very strongly about removing that term and have given a proper explanation, then I'd advise calling an informal vote within the thread and following the decision. Alternatively if after this conversation, members understand Andy's point of view and the term doesn't have serious consequences - let's agree with what Andy inputted in the first place and move this project ahead. In an ideal world, we wouldn't require voting, but rather a discussion. However, if there are strong opinions for/against a specific decision that is causing us to be at a standstill, this is where informal voting helps.

I have updated the form with wider context and other options to reflect a 5-point survey, should anyone wish to express/change their vote. It would be good to view how the community feels about this in general, which should guide us in future similar situations.

I just want to reiterate that we all working towards a common goal within the project, and although disagreements can arise, we should always seek ways to compromise.

Many thanks,

Kelly Choi

Xen Project Community Manager

XenServer, Cloud Software Group

On Fri, Dec 1, 2023 at 11:03 PM George Dunlap <george.dunlap@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 1, 2023 at 9:44 PM Stefano Stabellini
<sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> By the informal
> voting, we have 3 against "broken" and 2 in favor (not 1 as George wrote
> as Andrew's vote counts too).

Just to clarify: The opinions on that thread (if you include all
versions of the series) were:

Andy, Daniel for keeping "broken
Julien, Jan, Stefano, George: for changing "broken"

That's the "2 (+) / 4 split" I referred to (The "(+)" being the people
who agreed with Andy in private). Regarding voting, I was only
counting the maintainers of the code in question; it coming under THE
REST, that would include everyone except Daniel; hence 1 - 4. Not at
all that Daniel's opinion doesn't matter, but that from a governance
perspective, it's the maintainers (and then the committers) who get
votes in the case of a formal escalation.

-George

Re: INFORMAL VOTE REQUIRED - DOCUMENTATION WORDING