On Sunday, 29. July 2007 at 1:11 am, Jeff Johnson wrote:
> On Jul 28, 2007, at 4:49 PM, Thomas Lotterer wrote:
> 
>> I want to suggest we create and maintain a document describing
>> architectural decisions of rpm5.org.
> 
> OK. There's nothing stopping anyone from doing whatever,
> 
Yep. In fact, throttling and stopping developers should be avoided,
especially in the OSS world where the activities of many developers are
fueled by personal ego and energy. However, sometimes it's good to give
developers a direction.

> but if you need rules and engineering and whatever else, well, I guess
> you'll have to make a proposal.
> 
I'll do when I notice that two or more (groups of) developers are
heading in different directions, running risk to spend more of their
time with fruitless discussions than dedicating to actual development.
Early consensus on direction(s) to be taken avoids unnecessary work.
Late consensus still helps avoiding sparking smouldering fires again and
again in the future.

> But if you wish to restrict vendor choice(s) through engineering
> documents, well have at!
> 
I know what over-regulation means. Our document should be kept to the
minimum and grow slowly with contents being accepted by the majority of
rpm-team.

>> To be more precise:
>> - the document should be in the repository,
>>   maybe ARCHITECTURE or docs/architecture
> 
> OK.
> 
I better should have written "either ... or".

>> - basically the document will correlate with our roadmap,
>>   but it also includes the reasons that led to decisions
> 
> What reasons?
> 
I mean, if we decide to take the blue pill I'd like to remember the
justification for it. So any future review can quickly identify whether
it's time to discuss the decision again or better keep it as is.

>> I'm not in favor of paperwork but I expect this to be valuable.
> 
> To whom?
> 
Those who know may point ignorant people to it.
Those who accept can get support from the majority.
Those who obey should have their contributions accepted.
 

-- 
http://thomas.lotterer.net