| 10 Dec 2023 |
 @joepie91:pixie.town | I expect that a great deal of the friction here comes precisely from it not being an RFC; both because of the missing detail regarding motivation and alternatives, and because of the "this is happening" tone that a PR has | 20:24:32 |
 Artturin | Dunno why that change is so controversial as requiring a github account to contribute is already necessary | 20:24:40 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | a big part of the RFC process is to avoid this sort of conflict by clearly setting out rationales from the start, to more easily reach consensus | 20:24:50 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | now half the story is missing, people are left to guess that missing half, that leads to wrong assumptions, suspicions, conflicts, etc. | 20:25:21 |
 raitobezarius | Recently, I wrote an RFC for something and I was told that RFC was not the right place to do it because it was for controversial stuff, and it ended up being controversial | 20:25:27 |
| Artturin | An rfc would be to allow non github contributions | 20:25:34 |
| raitobezarius | And right now, I am doing this seemingly trivial change in my eyes regarding this data and now this is regarded as very controversial and the discussion has been very unpleasant on my side | 20:25:54 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @raitobezarius:matrix.org
Recently, I wrote an RFC for something and I was told that RFC was not the right place to do it because it was for controversial stuff, and it ended up being controversial could you link me? I'm curious what happened there, because there's rarely a reason to reject something being an RFC, in the simplest case everybody agrees and it passes with barely any discussion | 20:26:32 |
| Artturin | * Instead an rfc would be to allow non github contributions | 20:26:31 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | or that's how these processes are supposed to work anyway | 20:26:43 |
| raitobezarius | In reply to @joepie91:pixie.town
could you link me? I'm curious what happened there, because there's rarely a reason to reject something being an RFC, in the simplest case everybody agrees and it passes with barely any discussion https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/165#discussion_r1379020798 | 20:27:07 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | thanks, looking | 20:27:15 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | hm, I think that's a misinterpretation of "RFCs should themselves be immutable" as "RFCs should only be made for immutable changes" | 20:28:41 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | the former is the intent | 20:28:52 |
| raitobezarius | shrugs | 20:29:22 |
| raitobezarius | It's hard to debate this with someone who is on the RFC steering commitee | 20:29:37 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | so from a glance I would say that your choice to make that an RFC was a perfectly fine one | 20:30:02 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | yeah this is maybe something that should be hashed out | 20:30:07 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @artturin:matrix.org
Dunno why that change is so controversial as requiring a github account to contribute is already necessary to respond to this: another goal of the RFC process is to unearth concerns or objections that might not be known yet, from people who would otherwise not assertively speak up. gaining insight into why others might have a problem with something is very much part of it :) | 20:31:51 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | cc infinisil re: the RFC stuff above | 20:32:15 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | if you have a moment | 20:32:28 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | (would like to clear this up so that it doesn't turn into more governance issues down the line) | 20:32:47 |
 Julien | Honestly, the part of the picture that is missing is that RFCs are a very energy draining process that burns out people and take a lot of time to get merged. | 20:33:40 |
| Julien | I understand why one would like to go around this process for changes that feel that they should not be controversial | 20:34:37 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | to provide a bit of background about the RFC process: it is supposed to be a relatively low-friction / "lightweight" process for gaining community consensus on governance or technical changes that might be controversial or need to take into account diverse perspectives. for a variety of practical reasons it is currently not as low-energy as it should be, however | 20:34:46 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | (some of these are related to moderation, some of them are simply because there's not much of a culture around it yet, some of it is historical baggage) | 20:35:08 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @julienmalka:matrix.org
I understand why one would like to go around this process for changes that feel that they should not be controversial I understand that as well, but at the same time it's important to acknowledge that top-down management of something is always easier in the short term than community governance; community governance is never the easy option, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth doing | 20:36:04 |
| Julien | We probably have some work to do to improve that process because I don’t think it is « lightweight » in nixpkgs. I don’t have much experience of the RFC process in other community to tell what could be improved in ours | 20:36:23 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | in the long term it results in a much healthier project | 20:36:29 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | oh yes, we have a lot to improve, that's for sure | 20:36:37 |
