[Development] New Chief Maintainer

Andy Shaw andy.shaw at qt.io
Fri May 20 08:12:16 CEST 2022


Hi,

Based on the wording I agree, it is clear that all maintainers should vote in this case, and it is a simple majority of those maintainers. Any maintainer who does not vote is not counted as part of the total, so if there is a single candidate then a vote is redundant, because you are voting for someone, abstaining means it is not counted in the total. If there are multiple candidates, then it has to be a majority, meaning more than half of the votes to win (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority#Majority_vote - simple majority is covered here), but if there is only 2 candidates then one can reasonably go with the fact that the one with the most is the de-facto winner because if you redid the vote without the candidate with the fewest votes then it's fairly clear cut. If there is more than 2 then we should drop the one with the fewest votes and redo the vote and so on until we do indeed have a simple majority.

One other thing is that I think that we should do our best to make sure the maintainers (as a group) are aware of this, we have basically just given then 1 week to agree on the new Chief Maintainer, which to be frank, is not long enough. The QUIP says 1 month's warning and Lars has given that, so we should use most of that month to allow a proper process and to give people a chance to actually get the news. All of the maintainer's email addresses are on the wiki so we should have a mail sent directly to them to indicate that this happened (not everyone is on the mailing list, and the vote itself might slip by people if they are on vacation or similar otherwise when it gets announced) and that way we can be sure everyone has been given enough time to react and vote if they should choose to. This is a vote which is important to the Qt Project and my opinion on who should be Chief Maintainer has no bearing on things since I am not a maintainer, but I would like to see this process make it clear that everyone (who is in the position to do so) feel that they had a say in this , and that the Qt Project is truly an open project.

Regarding the nomination process, this is woefully under documented in the QUIP as there is no indication as to how you get nominated for Chief Maintainer, from the reading of it the Maintainers themselves decide who should be Chief Maintainer by way of simple majority but that could in theory mean anyone can be nominated for it. I think that anyone can put themselves forward for being Chief Maintainer and should also give an indication as to why they feel they would be ideal for the position. Then this could be voted on in a voting page like we did with the previous situation so that the actual votes are confidential. 

Regardless of who gets the position, QUIP 2 does need to be tightened up in a number of ways, we should be a lot clearer on this process to avoid problems next time, and also there should be general wording on what happens when a maintainer is no longer active, if there is no one having the responsibilities for them formally delegated, then it shouldn't need a vote to have the privileges removed.

Kind regards,
Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Development <development-bounces at qt-project.org> On Behalf Of André Somers
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2022 5:43 AM
To: Volker Hilsheimer <volker.hilsheimer at qt.io>; development at qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] New Chief Maintainer

Hi Volker,

On 19-05-2022 22:42, Volker Hilsheimer wrote:
>> On 18 May 2022, at 11:23, André Somers <andre at familiesomers.nl> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 18-05-2022 11:19, André Somers wrote:
>>> As I understand it [1], this needs a formal vote. However, the QUIP 
>>> does not specify a full procedure. I would suggest:
>> And then I forget the actual link:
>>
>> https://quips-qt-io.herokuapp.com/quip-0002.html#how-to-become-chief-
>> maintainer
>
> Thanks André.
>
> The QUIP asks for a simple-majority vote of all Maintainers. Either way, let’s see what other nominations we get.
>
> May I propose that until end of Wednesday 25th, Maintainers can nominate other candidates (including themselves), and then we can have a vote amongst those candidates nominated (the simple majority is enough as per QUIP). The QUIP doesn’t explicitly require the candidate to be a Maintainer.
>
> If we have only one candidate by end of Wednesday, then we can use lazy consensus, i.e. as long as none of the maintainers object to the candidate, that candidate becomes chief maintainer. Although I’d expect that whoever has an objection to one candidate also nominates another candidate.

The procedure outlined in the linked QUIP is substantially different from the procedure outlined for becoming a Maintainer. The wording to me suggest we need an actual vote in this case, not a lazy consensus. The "simple majority" refers to the needed number of votes out of the quorum (simple majority meaning >50%), not the simplicity of the voting procedure IMO.

So no, I don't think a lazy consensus will do. And no, I don't think it's having an objection to a candidate means that you also know a good other candidate willing to take up the baton instead.

Cheers,

André


>
> Volker
>
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