Re: [gentoo-dev] Democracy: No silver bullet

[Daniel Ostrow <dostrow@gentoo.org>]

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On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 20:55 +0200, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Lance Albertson wrote:
> 
> > Anyways, I'm not going to take any more flame bait since I'm sick and
> > tired of this shit.
> 
> And my intention was not to revive that precise debate. I'm just saying
> that for the "leader" (or "strong council") to succeed, everyone has to
> follow what he/they decide.
> 
> With the current organization/devsgroup, very often the affected team
> will think that the decision is not right or could be improved (and very
> often they will be right, as they know better their turf than anyone).
> Is *everyone* here prepared to obey to orders they won't like ?
> 
> That's why I agree with you Lance when you say :
> 
> > I'm afraid those days are in the past unless some kind of fork happens
> > where the folks who think we need a leader go their way and the folks
> > who prefer the leader-by-committee approach go their way. We all hate
> > forks, none of us have time for forks, but looking at the dividing line,
> > I don't see how we'll be able to compromise with out adding more
> > policies and BS.
> 
> I've done my best the last two years trying to change the metastructure
> into something more efficient. I guess I failed. A lot of current devs
> did not enter Gentoo by signing a "I will obey to the leader" paper, so
> they decided noone can rule (or change the system). I see only a fork to
> solve the division between those wanting strong leadership/vision and
> those wanting gentoo-dev votes for every decision (yes, someone asked
> for that not that long ago).

The way I look at it is having strong leadership does not mean
abdicating your ability to provide quality input in the leadership
process. The entire reason for the two aforementioned issues boiled down
to a lack of communication. I believe that the job of a good leader is
to seek out feedback from those that know better about an issue then
they do. Being a good leader *means* understanding your strengths and
weaknesses.

Taking the email issue previously mentioned as an example. The council
was under the impression that since the discussions happened out in the
open that any issues anyone had would have been raised in that forum,
infra was under the impression that if they were going to be asked to
perform a new duty that their opinions would have been actively
solicited (and I'm talking more then "Well the meeting agenda was posted
and no one from infra showed up ... I guess infra doesn't care.", what I
am talking about is "Well this involves infra in a key way, lets get
Lance and Kurt in here to discuss this and if we can't find them lets
postpone the discussion until we can."), neither happened and what we
ended up with was an edict that made no sense. Clearly, although filling
this role is less then glamorous, the roll of those in charge has to
include actively tracking the involved parties down, quiet acquiescence
and silent acceptance can't work when dealing with issues that involve
the hard work of other people.

When I talk about strong leaders who provide a forward looking vision I
am not talking about people who do this in a vacuum, I am talking about
people who coalesce the will of the group into a cohesive plan and
provide way points along the way to ensure that progress is being made.
I am talking about people who build their own vision on top of the ideas
of the other groups that make up the community. Sure even in those cases
there will be conflicting goals and differing opinions but those in
charge should be able to hear those out and try to come to a rational
compromise. From there the decision has to stand...I have a feeling that
following a plan, even when it doesn't jive with your view, will be an
easier pill to swallow if you are sure that your input and concerns were
honestly heard and digested as part of the decision making process. I
think of the community as a whole as a sort of advisory board to the
Council...I dunno, I'm sure there will still be those that are so upset
that their choice, opinion, or plan was not heeded 100% that they throw
a fit and/or leave but maybe just maybe that is OK, maybe that is just a
sign that was they want isn't what Gentoo is. We are trying to make
Gentoo everything for everyone and failing...maybe we just need to
accept that we are not and cannot be and that people moving on to find
what really is what they want is healthy, not only for Gentoo but for
Linux and OSS as whole.

--Dan

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