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Zulip setup coordination

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Coordination to setup https://nixpkgs.zulipchat.com/, see https://github.com/NixOS/foundation/issues/14333 Servers

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21 Feb 2024
@delroth:delroth.net@delroth:delroth.net(which interestingly is not an option you've listed? it seems obvious to me, but it's interesting to notice that it's not even being considered in those discussions)22:33:52
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezariusvoting is often a contentious matter because people cannot agree (or we don't even try?) to agree to a constitutency22:34:13
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezarius * voting is often a contentious matter because people cannot agree (or we don't even try?) to agree to a constituency22:34:25
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezarius(not saying this is impossible, just rehashing some of the objections that often come up with the 'let's vote on X')22:34:40
@delroth:delroth.net@delroth:delroth.netyou don't need to vote to elect a constituency, you can vote on decisions directly22:34:46
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezariusi meant the set of people who can vote, the constituency, is unclear to bootstrap22:35:09
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezariusand selecting committers/maintainers/everyone seems arbitrary (?)22:35:22
@tomberek:matrix.orgtomberek it's fair to say that we should add 0. vote.... but even if you vote, it doesn't assign a single person to get it done. There are several popular proposals, PRs, issues, RFCs, that "have the vote" but are not getting done. 22:37:00
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezarius
In reply to @tomberek:matrix.org

Jonas Chevalier: but we're back to the original problem.... if you want someone to take on the responsibility of making such a decision and driving it, then the desire for such an outcome needs to be clearly stated at the project-level. This is not an isolated thing that a few people can independently decide on, because of the cross-cutting concerns and impacts.

To answer your original question: "who can make the decision whenever we allow unfree packages to be built on Hydra or not?" you have a few options:

  1. an individual - not ideal, because making them responsible for fallout would be a poor outcome
  2. a team - infra is in the best position to do so (@infinisil: they have the technical permissions to make the changes and fix issues or clean up violations), but are unlikely to make this decision without a decision from elsewhere in the ecosystem.
  3. the board - would require making a "direction"-style decision, which they have stated as out of their scope
  4. RFC - making the shepherds responsible for fallout is also poor
  5. The Nix Teams Representatives group - perhaps the best out of the above options? It's new, but has started to make similar decisions.
I think in this topic ^ interestingly, we could have a "vote among nix team representatives", announce there would be a vote and let everyone who doesn't feel represented by the announced participants to join, this is obviously incomplete for many reasons and the vote could be thrown away, but this would provide a first step towards trying to use a vote mechanism
22:38:05
@tomberek:matrix.orgtomberekAlways remember authority/responsibility. If you give too wide a group the authority/vote for a decision, you then need a way to give them responsibility to implement it was well..... quite hard when the vote is too wide.22:38:28
@tomberek:matrix.orgtomberekNixpkgs has done this to some extent.22:38:42
@tomberek:matrix.orgtomberekAnother approach: you vote for the prioritization of a policy, and another vote for people to execute those policies. This is starts to be much more complicated. (see the considerations above by others)22:44:45
@delroth:delroth.net@delroth:delroth.nettbf I think that if we have a good process for having consensus on the direction / decisions, having a process for finding someone to execute seems less important22:46:10
@delroth:delroth.net@delroth:delroth.netfirst of all because I expect people will organically show up if the decision is made and has consensus, second because it's open source and unless you pay people for contract work you can't really make them execute stuff anyway22:46:43
22 Feb 2024
@zimbatm:numtide.com@zimbatm:numtide.com

on some level, I feel like having a shared understanding of how decisions are made, and increasing that rate, is more important than who is making them (assuming actors with good intent).

I like delroth's idea of just posting: hey, I want to do XYZ, are there any blockers? In that sense, this particular issue could be driven by the CUDA team, as they are interested in having the unfree+redistributable built.

Another idea would be to introduce a bat signal that people can raise when they see a deadlocked issue, and then have a couple of us not making a decision, but triaging who should be making the decision.

10:29:36
@apcodes:matrix.org@apcodes:matrix.orgI think I like the idea of a bat signal. I was wondering, given the size of everything, who is keeping a list of all the deadlocked issues?12:15:50
@zimbatm:numtide.com@zimbatm:numtide.comsee https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Acreated-asc :)16:08:16
@apcodes:matrix.org@apcodes:matrix.org
In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
see https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Acreated-asc :)
oh yes, that is a nice list. Very pragmatic approach to making it too!
16:43:51
@ronef:matrix.orgronef
In reply to @delroth:delroth.net
really imo this just needs someone willing to start a discourse thread asking for objections, leaving enough time for contributors and active community members to participate, then figure out how to handle the eventual objections - the whole discussion about infra and the foundation are red herrings here, at least from infra we'll figure out how to execute the decision
Sorry just catching up. Wanted to ++ on this item
17:32:21
@ronef:matrix.orgronef

Maybe we should brainstorm a decision tree process?

A lot of what I'm reading throughout this thread and generally strongly agreeing with seems to end in two areas:

  1. Making Decisions
  2. Executing on Decisions

One can't go without the other... and each have a high reliance in all avenues on the other.
i.e. Ideally the team/individual making a decision is then also the one to execute. Execution should provide a level of empowerment to make decisions. In my mind == doacracy (the act of doing gives the individual/team the power to decide)

17:34:46
@ronef:matrix.orgronefTotal example one without a lot of thought behind but might be a good exercise to brainstorm on: 17:41:39
@ronef:matrix.orgronef1000051542.jpg
Download 1000051542.jpg
17:42:07
@ronef:matrix.orgronef(sorry for lack of proper rotation or artistic capabilities)17:42:54
23 Feb 2024
@ss:someonex.netSomeoneSerge (hash-versioned python modules when)
In reply to @delroth:delroth.net
really imo this just needs someone willing to start a discourse thread asking for objections, leaving enough time for contributors and active community members to participate, then figure out how to handle the eventual objections - the whole discussion about infra and the foundation are red herrings here, at least from infra we'll figure out how to execute the decision

(Following a conversation with Jonas Chevalier) The CUDA team might be a candidate to come out with this proposal.

I'll also note that there's an entangled issue of the less controversial ROCm/OpenCL[/Vulkan] functionality also not being tested because it requires special hardware. This concerns both cuda-maintainers and rocm-maintainers, possibly the "geospatial" team and some "unowned" subsystems ("HPC", meaning e.g. slurm and mpi, maintained by single individuals). The issues are similar in that they are about nixpkgs keeping around an amount of untested code of unknown "expiry date", and in that this happens because whether to provision (and pay for) this hardware is a decision to be made by somebody.

13:23:01
@delroth:delroth.net@delroth:delroth.netI don't really understand what makes this different from many, many other packages in nixpkgs that require specific hardware to test and use.13:26:21
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezariusDo we have similarly complicated package set with specific hardware needs without any simulator? (genuine question)13:27:01
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezariusFor example, hostapd can be tested in NixOS tests via 80211 hw simulators13:27:12
@delroth:delroth.net@delroth:delroth.netnot sure, but you're raising the bar significantly above the usual maintenance level of a nixpkgs package13:27:45
@raitobezarius:matrix.orgraitobezariusthat's fair13:27:54
@delroth:delroth.net@delroth:delroth.neta good example would be home-assistant13:28:02

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