[Dev] review stalemate - what to do next?

[Katie Capps Parlante]

Alec Flett wrote:
> Mike Taylor wrote:
> 
>>     1. Owner's opinion prevails
>>     2. Reviewer's opinion prevails
>>     3. It's put to a vote before an impartial body - most of the time 
>> that body will be the dev list
>>     4. <insert alternative solution here>
>>
> I have to agree with Philippe here - #3 seems like the best of the 3, 
> and I think #1 simply isn't an option because otherwise the owner could 
> just always reject the reviewer's opinions.
> 
> I think it really comes down to basic decision making, and that seems 
> like a good use of dev. I don't even think it always has to be a formal 
> vote, just more of a discussion.. I mean if two people disagree 
> seriously on any decision in chandler, its going to have to be hashed 
> out either between those people or (preferably) in the public realm to 
> set a precedent for future decisions on similar topics.

Apologies for jumping in on an old thread here...

I think we've seen time and again that when two people strongly disagree 
about some technical decision, it helps break the deadlock to bring the 
discussion to a wider group. Bringing the issue to the dev list for 
discussion is an excellent way to do that. Someone may be able to shed 
light on the issue or broker a compromise, and we get a record of the 
decision and the decision thought process. IMHO #3 is generally a good 
strategy for getting a better result, if all participants are acting in 
good faith.

Perhaps Bear and Heikki are thinking more about "color of the bikeshed" 
issues (more trivial matters that don't benefit from ratholing into long 
discussions):

    http://producingoss.com/html-chunk/bikeshed-full.html.

So far we haven't really had significant "bikeshed" conversations, so 
I'm not too worried about that at this point.

As Ted pointed out, we're not going to fully resolve this until we make 
broader decisions about governance structure. I'm sure we'll jump into 
that conversation a bit later.

Cheers,
Katie