[ANN] Please use Gerrit from now on for Patch Review

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 03:52:11PM +0200, Lubos Lunak wrote:
>  Besides, is every committer required to study ESC minutes?

Good question. IMHO not in general. But this is one of the rare occations,
where I think making a difference between volunteers and full-time paid
developers is sensible. I personally I think it can be expected from full-time
developers to follow at least the essential minutes posted to
projects at global.libreoffice.org.

>  Announcing something properly means announcing it in the right place 
> (this list)

... which is where the ESC minutes are posted.

>  If there weren't problems with communicating this, why the three biggest 
> subthreads start with Caolan's "why gerrit?", Kendy's "how the new workflow 
> is supposed to look like?" and Petr's "first need to conclude that gerrit is 
> in usable state"? This thread is here for a reason.

I think there are multiple things to consider: First it seems, that some people
panicked and assumed this announcement suddenly meaning "every change *must* go
through changereview with gerrit" or any other implied policy change although
that was never stated.

Still thats a valid question, but I dont have to answer that alone. Frankly, I
expect members of the ESC to have a clear idea what we are spending resources
on and if there is any fundamental doubt to question that investment _early_ on.
So from the way the ESC works and as can be seen from the minutes the question
of "if we use gerrit" was already long decided, the open question was "how we
use gerrit".

I expect ESC members to have either an informed and qualified opinion on
ongoing topics or them completely trust those involved to do the right thing --
esp. when it is about the way we collaborate. That was unfortunately clearly
not the case here. So yes, there has been some leadership failure and
miscommunication here. How could anyone on the ESC, which is expect to lead and
make the final executive decision _not_ have at least looked at gerrit once
after months, unless he is completely and blindly trusting those implementing
it?

Anyway, we will clarify on the ESC call and should find some way to not make it
happen again.

Best,

Bjoern