Sure, ideally.

But you can't have "everyone" together at the same time on IRC, where  
at the ASF, we define "everyone" to be, well, "everyone", not you and  
the 4 others on the PMC.

I see 579 people on the user list.  I see 294 people on the dev list.   
Just focusing on the dev list, that's 290 people, or 98.6% of people  
supposedly interested in CouchDB development, that had zero  
opportunity to see, review and participate in the discussion.   
Further, there's now zero chance that any future project participant  
can look back to understand design decision and philosophy.  No  
institutional memory.  Your goal, besides building a great software  
project, should be to get the community to the point where you can  
step back and do other things w/o material effect on the community,  
and that requires information like this to be somewhere accessible.

And unlike Ted, I don't agree that a pointer to an IRC log is  
sufficient to represent a "done decision", and he may not have meant  
that anyway.  Sure, I can see a chat starting on IRC about a topic,  
but I'd hope that one person would force the move from IRC to the mail  
list - and at that point, maybe posting a pointer to the *initial*  
discussion log would be useful.  And after that, discussion is on the  
mail list.

I think IRC logs are a very poor substitute to mail traffic (and yes,  
I grok the downside of async communications).  A primary one reason  
that they are very "in the moment" - if you are in the conversation,  
it's easy to stay in, but after, when things cool and the context of  
the moment isn't there, it's neigh impossible.  You also can't hit  
reply and quote a piece for others to see and discuss, further  
broadening the discussion.

What got me engaged on this wasn't the decision itself (only because  
it was a secret decision), but -like Ted - the mode of operation.  It  
seemed that a very dedicated, engaged and interested community member  
had to privately petition the PMC for redress on a technical decision  
that none of us had any awareness of, nor a chance to review.  And  
IMO, from a guy that probably should be a committer and PMC member to  
boot!

(By the way - from my count, not all PMC members are even on the PMC's  
private@ list, so I have *no clue* where project private discussion -  
like new committer candidates - are even discussed....)

geir


On Feb 5, 2009, at 2:11 AM, Damien Katz wrote:

> Ideally yes, but real time communication with everyone together is  
> damn useful.
>
> -Damien
>
> On Feb 5, 2009, at 2:07 AM, Ted Leung wrote:
>
>> Uh, project decisions are supposed to be made in the public mailing  
>> lists...
>>
>> Ted
>>
>> On Feb 4, 2009, at 6:51 PM, Damien Katz wrote:
>>
>>> This decision was discussed and made on IRC.
>>>
>>> -Damien
>>>
>>> On Feb 4, 2009, at 9:26 PM, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
>>>
>>>> can you point me to a reference to where the PMC made this  
>>>> decision?
>>>>
>>>> I'm interested in the subject for it's own sake, and I'm also  
>>>> interested in figuring out where decisions are made in this  
>>>> project, since I didn't see this one go by on a mail list.
>>>>
>>>> geir
>>>>
>>>> On Feb 4, 2009, at 9:13 PM, Damien Katz wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Geir, there was a decision made by the PMCs to change the  
>>>>> transaction model to support partitioned databases. It is a  
>>>>> change I am currently working on.
>>>>>
>>>>> -Damien
>>>>>
>>>>> On Feb 4, 2009, at 8:46 PM, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> and original question #2?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> geir
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Feb 4, 2009, at 8:38 PM, Antony Blakey wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 05/02/2009, at 12:02 PM, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 1) where is this being forwarded from ?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I sent it to the PMC.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Antony Blakey
>>>>>>> -------------
>>>>>>> CTO, Linkuistics Pty Ltd
>>>>>>> Ph: 0438 840 787
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A Buddhist walks up to a hot-dog stand and says, "Make me one  
>>>>>>> with everything". He then pays the vendor and asks for change.  
>>>>>>> The vendor says, "Change comes from within".
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>
>