Re: Stable branch will freeze.

[Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@giblet.glug.org>]

   From: Marius Vollmer <mvo@zagadka.ping.de>
   Date: 15 Mar 2002 20:54:44 +0100

   Please reconsider.  It would be sad to lose your contributions, but I
   think we could manage.

of course everyone can manage (to varying degrees), that's not the
point.  the point is that declarations of power are not as constructive
as recording (somewhere): your policy, your plan, your work-in-progress,
your requests for help or collaboration (if needed), and your general
openness to feedback.  some of these can be informally recorded (like in
mailing list archives), some are more useful when detailed in a special
place that encourages review and update.

this allows people to develop trust in your Way, and consequently You
(the one who Practices).  it is a joy to follow such a leader because
people can also practice along w/ you (if your methods are easy to
adopt), help themselves develop personally as they help you tune it, and
Get Things Done transparently w/o mystery.  (bonus, too: the more power
you spread the more you get.)

when a collaborator, instead, makes declarations of unilateral power
bereft of these groundwork activities, it reminds me exactly of how i
made these kinds of declarations when in a provisional leadership
position (and fucked up big time); i feel miserable remembering what it
was that drove me to do that and doubly miserable deconstructing why
"drove me to do that" is not quite right -- it's always a decision.

this misery is compounded when i think of the people to whom i made
these declarations, who (predictably) lost -- more likely, never built
up -- trust in my leadership abilities, and called into question (very
frequently) my technical abilities, as well.  it was the beginnings of a
royally dysfunctional work relationship, classic stuff (if you believe
those organizational behavior books ;-), and the project suffered from
the extra overhead incurred.

although i'm a pedant, i will now restrain from trying to imply my
experiences have relevance here.  i am open to learning new styles (if
they are effective).

if anyone has read this far, they might be wondering, what is the point
asking for write privs removal?  well, the nature of guile (and any free
software) collaborative effort is that there is really no such thing as
removing write privs to the source (people just snarf the repo and hack
local source).  the question was an attempt to determine your policy and
maturity level, so as to be able to fine-tune my trust model and plan
for your actions.

thi

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