Discussion regarding Election for Jeroen Koekkoek as Committer on Eclipse Cyclone DDS
I believe there has been an unfortunate misunderstanding of the position of Jeroen that caused his nomination as a committer to have been rejected. If it is possible, I would like the decision to reject to be
reconsidered. If I am wrong in sending to this list on this particular issue, then please forgive me and direct me to the appropriate procedure instead.
Two points were raised essentially. The first is that it carried a whiff of him having been hired for the express purpose of becoming a committer. That, however, is definitely not the case.
He has been with ADLINK for several years, has worked on what is now Eclipse Cyclone DDS internally before it was contributed to Eclipse, and is the only one besides myself who has actually made substantive contributions
to the project: the work on continuous integration is his, and I know from personal conversations that he is a strong supporter of the project and is currently undertaking relevant work, work that he simply hasn’t yet felt ready to share. This includes:
- FreeRTOS support — quite valuable for embedded systems, which is one of the strong points of DDS
- various improvements to the testing, as we have some issues with intermittent tests on Windows due to a problematic library we depend on
- the beginnings of proper C++ support
- assembling a list of issues that need to be addressed, so that others in the community can actually see if there is anything they can do without first digging into all the details.
On the second point, regarding the existence of proper procedures for contributions from non-committers, I agree that these procedures are in place. However, that in itself does not eliminate the conflict of interest
that is inherent in a committer approving his own contributions, which is basically what I have been forced to do, though it bothers me quite a bit. Having an active co-committer would solve that. In my personal opinion and having known Jeroen
for years, he is someone who will take on that role in a meaningful manner.
I am aware that there are a number of other committers, but they have not taken that
active role, as the record shows. Still, they have voted in favour. Finally, outside this group of people, the community really is but nascent, with only a few people having asked questions so far and only one truly external contribution.
Given all that, I feel my vote should carry some weight, and it is fully behind Jeroen becoming a committer.
Best regards,
Erik Boasson
