Re: Xen 4.4 development update

[George Dunlap <george.dunlap@eu.citrix.com>]

On 23/09/13 08:24, Jan Beulich wrote:
> And no, I don't agree with your initial statement. The outcome of
> the most recent community call was "make all regressions of xl vs
> xm a blocker for 4.4". Of course I don't read this to imply features
> no-one uses, but I certainly read this to cover features that some
> people use, even if they're not a majority.

Any decision about the direction of where Xen goes needs to be made in 
public.  Everyone who has a stake needs to be able to see the reasoning 
that went into it, and challenge it and make their own viewpoint known 
if necessary.  The community call cannot do this -- the call is not 
recorded, so no one can listen in to the discussion to see what the 
reasoning was, and no one can retroactively go back and enter the 
discussion to affect the outcome.

The community call is good for significant contributors to more 
effectively discuss what the positions of the individual people on the 
call are, what problems there are, and quickly brainstorm solutions or 
compromises that work for everyone.  But if the people on the call 
decide something, all it means is that the individual people on the call 
have decided -- it's not binding on the community until it has been 
discussed on the list.

Obviously the people on the call carry a lot of weight in the community, 
so it's likely that anything decided there will ultimately be decided 
here; but it's not something that can be taken for granted.

  -George