[gentoo-dev] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[gentoo-dev] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ned Ludd]

The dev population is quite a strange beast. I never expected to win. 
Why would you vote for somebody who did not even publish a manifesto?
I don't know but I love you for it. My only intention was to help offset
dev-zero being able force the will of outside forces upon us. 
Well that has been accomplished for now (w00t). But I
never ever expected to be ranked so high. "/me blushes" So that means you
guys/gals expect stuff from me. Well as I never wrote a manifesto but
you still voted for me, I guess I should share some of my ideas on what
I'd like to see happen over the following year.

The devs have a voice one time of the year: when it comes time to vote.
But what about the rest of the year? What happens when the person you
voted for sucks? You are mostly powerless to do anything other than be
really vocal in what seems like a never ending battle. That needs to
change. I'm not quite sure how. But I'd like to see the dev body have a
year-round voice in the council. Either via quick votes year-round
on topics or simply by having discussion in the channel. Devs should have
a right to voice their concerns to the council and engage in interactive
conversations without being labeled troll.

Another one of the things I'd like to see and help reform with the
council. First off it spends way too much time on EAPI/PMS. There is no
reason to make the council an extension of the portage team. Portage is
still the official package manager of Gentoo. Granted it's good to 
accommodate others to an extent and I've always kept an open mind on other tools.
Alternatives are good as there is always the right tool for the task at hand. But
the council really should not be getting involved most of the time unless there 
is a conflict which can't be worked out among the masses and those trying to get
portage to adopt new features. If the dev body wants it otherwise then
I'd like to turn my vote over to you the devs. Each and every time the
council wants/has to vote on an EAPI/PMS feature then I'll happily put my
vote in your hands. You fire up that old votify system and use my vote
as yours. Note however that zmedico is not in favor of his time being
wasted on deciding what PMS/EAPI features are good. He simply likes bugs
and solving those. He likes giving us new features and tends to be more in
favor of the devs and community figuring out what is best for us. 
An EAPI review committee could work well also. As long as we could get 
non bias people in there.

The council should be more about community vs technical issues only.
We have lots of top level projects within Gentoo which have simply given
up on the council as being an outlet to accomplish anything useful.
It should be our job to look at the projects in Gentoo. Look at the ones
that have a healthy community and encourage and promote them in ways.

For example prefix comes to mind. It was a project I did not like at
first. I'm not even a user. And there are things I surely don't like
about it as is. But there is community support and it's the icing on the
cake for some. So I'll back the fsck up and give credit where it's due.
This is a perfectly good example of a project/fork that needs to come
back home. Perhaps it's time to cherry pick some more stuff/people out 
of Sunrise?

desultory points out any two council members can decide to approve anything, 
and that decision is considered to be equivalent to a full council vote
until the next meeting. I vaguely recall that rule. I'm not sure about you, 
but I think that is a little to much power to put in the hands of a few.
Any dev mind if we dump that power?

Meetings will likely go back to one time per month and be +m with +v be
handed out per request with open chat pre/post meetings.  The reason for
this is to keep the meetings on-track. I won't engage in endless
discussions. Facts can be presented. They will be reviewed on merit,
technical and social.

The reason the meetings should go back to monthly is to allow those who
are council members in Gentoo to accomplish things other than the
council only. We all have personal lives and we all have our respective
roles we play outside of the council. Another note on meetings. The time 
they are held currently don't fit well with my work schedule.

I'm not subscribed directly to the gentoo-dev mailing list anymore
outside of post-only. And I don't plan to re-subscribe. I do browse 
the archives regularly however. If there is some topic that should 
be brought to my attention please point it out to me directly on irc 
or CC: me.

Thank you all and I will try not to let you down. Unless you were one of
the ones who wanted to me lose. Then sorry, but I'm going to have fun
disappointing you, by doing what is best for Gentoo.

If you have any ideas on how you think the council should function or 
reform itself. Please start a new thread or email those who think will 
listen to those ideas. I'm open for some real change as long as it's 
for the the positive.

So lets have some damn fun again !@#$ 
Thanks.

Re: [gentoo-dev] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:33:52 -0700
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org> wrote:

>huge fscking snip<

Thank you. You were top of my list and I am counting on you. :)


Regards,
     jer

[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Doug Goldstein]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Ned Ludd<solar@gentoo.org> wrote:
> The dev population is quite a strange beast. I never expected to win.
> Why would you vote for somebody who did not even publish a manifesto?
> I don't know but I love you for it. My only intention was to help offset
> dev-zero being able force the will of outside forces upon us.
> Well that has been accomplished for now (w00t). But I
> never ever expected to be ranked so high. "/me blushes" So that means you
> guys/gals expect stuff from me. Well as I never wrote a manifesto but
> you still voted for me, I guess I should share some of my ideas on what
> I'd like to see happen over the following year.
>
> The devs have a voice one time of the year: when it comes time to vote.
> But what about the rest of the year? What happens when the person you
> voted for sucks? You are mostly powerless to do anything other than be
> really vocal in what seems like a never ending battle. That needs to
> change. I'm not quite sure how. But I'd like to see the dev body have a
> year-round voice in the council. Either via quick votes year-round
> on topics or simply by having discussion in the channel. Devs should have
> a right to voice their concerns to the council and engage in interactive
> conversations without being labeled troll.
>
> Another one of the things I'd like to see and help reform with the
> council. First off it spends way too much time on EAPI/PMS. There is no
> reason to make the council an extension of the portage team. Portage is
> still the official package manager of Gentoo. Granted it's good to
> accommodate others to an extent and I've always kept an open mind on other tools.
> Alternatives are good as there is always the right tool for the task at hand. But
> the council really should not be getting involved most of the time unless there
> is a conflict which can't be worked out among the masses and those trying to get
> portage to adopt new features. If the dev body wants it otherwise then
> I'd like to turn my vote over to you the devs. Each and every time the
> council wants/has to vote on an EAPI/PMS feature then I'll happily put my
> vote in your hands. You fire up that old votify system and use my vote
> as yours. Note however that zmedico is not in favor of his time being
> wasted on deciding what PMS/EAPI features are good. He simply likes bugs
> and solving those. He likes giving us new features and tends to be more in
> favor of the devs and community figuring out what is best for us.
> An EAPI review committee could work well also. As long as we could get
> non bias people in there.

Thank you. This was one thing I had said time and time again over the
past year. I long ago advocated for the EAPI/PMS crap to be sorted out
by the right people and the council was there to work out any
technical issues. We got the pms ML created and before I officially
joined the council while I was still proxying for Diego, we did handle
one such instance where the PMS people and zmedico had a disagreement.
All of a sudden the next round of EAPI/PMS debates became the complete
mess they are today. Thank you for having the energy to clean this up
again because I know I don't.

>
> The council should be more about community vs technical issues only.
> We have lots of top level projects within Gentoo which have simply given
> up on the council as being an outlet to accomplish anything useful.
> It should be our job to look at the projects in Gentoo. Look at the ones
> that have a healthy community and encourage and promote them in ways.

Bingo. That's exactly the point of the council.

>
> For example prefix comes to mind. It was a project I did not like at
> first. I'm not even a user. And there are things I surely don't like
> about it as is. But there is community support and it's the icing on the
> cake for some. So I'll back the fsck up and give credit where it's due.
> This is a perfectly good example of a project/fork that needs to come
> back home. Perhaps it's time to cherry pick some more stuff/people out
> of Sunrise?
>
> desultory points out any two council members can decide to approve anything,
> and that decision is considered to be equivalent to a full council vote
> until the next meeting. I vaguely recall that rule. I'm not sure about you,
> but I think that is a little to much power to put in the hands of a few.
> Any dev mind if we dump that power?

This should have been dumped a while ago. I believe Halcy0n and I had
issue with it and got a vote to dump it a while back.

>
> Meetings will likely go back to one time per month and be +m with +v be
> handed out per request with open chat pre/post meetings.  The reason for
> this is to keep the meetings on-track. I won't engage in endless
> discussions. Facts can be presented. They will be reviewed on merit,
> technical and social.

Thank you again. I tried the +m/+v thing a year ago and received a few
pieces of hate e-mail from mostly non-developer people. I'll let them
read this on the -dev ML and again let them remind themselves of the
fools they make of themselves on the ML. Recently I tried to introduce
this again but it quickly drained my energy when dealing with council
members in fighting over little rules and tweaks here and there which
then resulted in people saying they weren't for it anymore and it
never happened for the last 2 meetings. I just didn't have the energy
to deal with the bickering between council members over it. I applaud
you for having it.

>
> The reason the meetings should go back to monthly is to allow those who
> are council members in Gentoo to accomplish things other than the
> council only. We all have personal lives and we all have our respective
> roles we play outside of the council. Another note on meetings. The time
> they are held currently don't fit well with my work schedule.

Another HUGE reason why I didn't run again for the council. It simply
took up too much time and took away too much from development. As
everyone noticed for 2009, the meeting times worked horrible for my
work schedule. They in fact worked really bad for most US Gentoo
developer's work schedules and was a huge contributing factor to some
of our better council members resigning. Good luck trying to get the
meetings to be changed. Last time we discussed it, 3 council members
said the meeting times didn't work for them and the other 4 said it
was the only time good for them and it just resulted in a back and
forth.

>
> I'm not subscribed directly to the gentoo-dev mailing list anymore
> outside of post-only. And I don't plan to re-subscribe. I do browse
> the archives regularly however. If there is some topic that should
> be brought to my attention please point it out to me directly on irc
> or CC: me.
>
> Thank you all and I will try not to let you down. Unless you were one of
> the ones who wanted to me lose. Then sorry, but I'm going to have fun
> disappointing you, by doing what is best for Gentoo.
>
> If you have any ideas on how you think the council should function or
> reform itself. Please start a new thread or email those who think will
> listen to those ideas. I'm open for some real change as long as it's
> for the the positive.

Oh how we could talk for hours.... assuming you've got the energy were
mine was burnt out on all the pointless in fighting.

>
> So lets have some damn fun again !@#$
> Thanks.

This is why you got my vote... cause I knew while you and I haven't
gotten along in the past. You feel the same way about Gentoo as I do.

-- 
Doug Goldstein

[gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Duncan]

Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org> posted 1246502033.5688.40.camel@localhost,
excerpted below, on  Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:33:52 -0700:

> Why would you vote for somebody who did not even publish a manifesto? I
> don't know but I love you for it. My only intention was to help offset
> dev-zero being able force the will of outside forces upon us. Well that
> has been accomplished for now (w00t). But I never ever expected to be
> ranked so high. "/me blushes" So that means you guys/gals expect stuff
> from me. Well as I never wrote a manifesto but you still voted for me,

Those two reasons (offset, no manifesto) are IMO /the/ (singular) reason 
you were the #1 pick.

You are highly respected for your "no fuss, just do it, make it work" 
attitude, while respecting other devs' territory, over a relatively long 
period with Gentoo.  It's that same attitude that had you running with no 
manifesto, either they've worked with you long enough and respect you and 
your judgment and positions well enough to support you, or they don't, no 
manifesto need apply.  In fact, a manifesto would have contradicted that 
reputation, and as such, you'd have only lost votes putting one up.

The offset thing simply reinforced that.  Think about it.

> Devs should have a right to voice their concerns to the council and
> engage in interactive conversations without being labeled troll.

> An EAPI review committee

Has potential.  Keeps it out of the council's hair until time for the 
recommendation and up/down vote.

> It should be our job to look at the projects in Gentoo. Look at the ones
> that have a healthy community and encourage and promote them in ways.

> prefix comes to mind. [] I'm not even a user. [] But there is community
> support and it's the icing on the cake for some. So I'll back the fsck
> up and give credit where it's due.

> I won't engage in endless discussions. Facts can be presented.
> They will be reviewed on merit, technical and social.

> allow those who are council members in Gentoo to accomplish things
> other than the council only.

> So lets have some damn fun again !@#$ Thanks.

Wow!  Users thank you too. That's why people voted for you.  Looking 
forward to Gentoo's new year! =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Richard Freeman]

Doug Goldstein wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Ned Ludd<solar@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Meetings will likely go back to one time per month and be +m with +v be
>> handed out per request with open chat pre/post meetings.  The reason for
>> this is to keep the meetings on-track. I won't engage in endless
>> discussions. Facts can be presented. They will be reviewed on merit,
>> technical and social.
> 
> Thank you again. I tried the +m/+v thing a year ago and received a few
> pieces of hate e-mail from mostly non-developer people. 

Please do go to +m.  I usually just read council summaries - when I've 
tried to read the actual logs it is a COMPLETE mess.

In most organizational board-like bodies the board meeting is NOT the 
place to have open discussion on topics.  The open discussion happens 
everywhere BUT the board meeting.  It happens on the phone, on mailing 
lists, in newspapers, on TV, on talk radio, etc.  During the board 
meeting people who want to make a statement can do so within a limited 
amount of time, and then the board casts its vote.  95% of the time the 
way the vote will go is known before the meeting happens.  The meeting 
is just a formality.

If there is to be a 300 line argument over proposal-A vs proposal-B, do 
it on the mailing lists, or on IRC.  Council votes should be 
straightforward matters.

If we want to have more interaction - how about this idea:  Formal 
council meetings happen once per month, and they are the ONLY place 
votes take place.  However, the council will try to meet more often for 
less formal discussion.  +m/+v may be imposed at any time if there is a 
large turnout just to keep things somewhat orderly.  Attendance is not 
mandatory for these meetings, but is encouraged.  You could also 
schedule them at a variety of times - again, you're not missing any 
votes so if only 1/3rd of the council makes any particular meeting it 
isn't a big deal.

As far as having two council members temporarily approve items goes - it 
isn't a bad thing to have in general, but it should really only be used 
in emergency situations.  I'm not sure if we even need it - I suspect 
that groups like infra will "do the right thing" most of the time if 
there is an emergency (dev starts committing "rm -rf /*" scripts all 
over the portage tree - infra suspends cvs access first and finds devrel 
later).

Maybe a quick way to assess developer opinions on issues would be forum 
polls?  The votify system is potentially good as well, but I'm not sure 
how much work it requires on the part of infra to gather/tally the 
votes.  We really don't need the full rigor of votify for most issues 
(though it probably should be used if there are true referendums on 
serious matters).  And, of course, there is always the "measure the 
noise on the mailing list" approach, but I'm not a big fan of that 
(though I am a fan of lists in general).

[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ferris McCormick]

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There's a lot of good stuff to think about here.  For what it's worth,
some initial comments.

On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 19:33 -0700, Ned Ludd wrote:
> The dev population is quite a strange beast. I never expected to win. 
> Why would you vote for somebody who did not even publish a manifesto?
> I don't know but I love you for it. My only intention was to help offset
> dev-zero being able force the will of outside forces upon us. 
> Well that has been accomplished for now (w00t). But I
> never ever expected to be ranked so high. "/me blushes" So that means you
> guys/gals expect stuff from me. Well as I never wrote a manifesto but
> you still voted for me, I guess I should share some of my ideas on what
> I'd like to see happen over the following year.
> 
> The devs have a voice one time of the year: when it comes time to vote.
> But what about the rest of the year? What happens when the person you
> voted for sucks? You are mostly powerless to do anything other than be
> really vocal in what seems like a never ending battle. That needs to
> change. I'm not quite sure how. But I'd like to see the dev body have a
> year-round voice in the council. Either via quick votes year-round
> on topics or simply by having discussion in the channel. Devs should have
> a right to voice their concerns to the council and engage in interactive
> conversations without being labeled troll.
> 

We could provide for a recall vote, but I don't like that idea.
Discussion in channel is ideal if there is some way/someone to help keep
it civil enough to be useful.

> Another one of the things I'd like to see and help reform with the
> council. First off it spends way too much time on EAPI/PMS. There is no
> reason to make the council an extension of the portage team. Portage is
> still the official package manager of Gentoo. Granted it's good to 
> accommodate others to an extent and I've always kept an open mind on other tools.
> Alternatives are good as there is always the right tool for the task at hand. But
> the council really should not be getting involved most of the time unless there 
> is a conflict which can't be worked out among the masses and those trying to get
> portage to adopt new features. If the dev body wants it otherwise then
> I'd like to turn my vote over to you the devs. Each and every time the
> council wants/has to vote on an EAPI/PMS feature then I'll happily put my
> vote in your hands. You fire up that old votify system and use my vote
> as yours.

Not a bad idea if votify is agile enough.

> Note however that zmedico is not in favor of his time being
> wasted on deciding what PMS/EAPI features are good. He simply likes bugs
> and solving those. He likes giving us new features and tends to be more in
> favor of the devs and community figuring out what is best for us. 
> An EAPI review committee could work well also. As long as we could get 
> non bias people in there.
> 
EAPI review committee --- please do.  I agree that council meetings are
not the place to do detail EAPI work.

> The council should be more about community vs technical issues only.
> We have lots of top level projects within Gentoo which have simply given
> up on the council as being an outlet to accomplish anything useful.
> It should be our job to look at the projects in Gentoo. Look at the ones
> that have a healthy community and encourage and promote them in ways.
> 
Agreed.

> For example prefix comes to mind. It was a project I did not like at
> first. I'm not even a user. And there are things I surely don't like
> about it as is. But there is community support and it's the icing on the
> cake for some. So I'll back the fsck up and give credit where it's due.
> This is a perfectly good example of a project/fork that needs to come
> back home. Perhaps it's time to cherry pick some more stuff/people out 
> of Sunrise?
> 
> desultory points out any two council members can decide to approve anything, 
> and that decision is considered to be equivalent to a full council vote
> until the next meeting. I vaguely recall that rule. I'm not sure about you, 
> but I think that is a little to much power to put in the hands of a few.
> Any dev mind if we dump that power?
> 
Dump it.

> Meetings will likely go back to one time per month and be +m with +v be
> handed out per request with open chat pre/post meetings.  The reason for
> this is to keep the meetings on-track. I won't engage in endless
> discussions. Facts can be presented. They will be reviewed on merit,
> technical and social.
> 
Probably a good idea.  I don't much care for biweekly free-for-alls
either.

> The reason the meetings should go back to monthly is to allow those who
> are council members in Gentoo to accomplish things other than the
> council only. We all have personal lives and we all have our respective
> roles we play outside of the council. Another note on meetings. The time 
> they are held currently don't fit well with my work schedule.
> 
> I'm not subscribed directly to the gentoo-dev mailing list anymore
> outside of post-only. And I don't plan to re-subscribe. I do browse 
> the archives regularly however. If there is some topic that should 
> be brought to my attention please point it out to me directly on irc 
> or CC: me.
> 
> Thank you all and I will try not to let you down. Unless you were one of
> the ones who wanted to me lose. Then sorry, but I'm going to have fun
> disappointing you, by doing what is best for Gentoo.
> 
> If you have any ideas on how you think the council should function or 
> reform itself. Please start a new thread or email those who think will 
> listen to those ideas. I'm open for some real change as long as it's 
> for the the positive.
> 
Thank you.

> So lets have some damn fun again !@#$ 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

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[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Tobias Scherbaum]

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Ned Ludd wrote:
> The devs have a voice one time of the year: when it comes time to vote.
> But what about the rest of the year? What happens when the person you
> voted for sucks? You are mostly powerless to do anything other than be
> really vocal in what seems like a never ending battle. That needs to
> change. I'm not quite sure how. But I'd like to see the dev body have a
> year-round voice in the council. Either via quick votes year-round
> on topics or simply by having discussion in the channel. Devs should have
> a right to voice their concerns to the council and engage in interactive
> conversations without being labeled troll.

I'm not sure about that, but we can easily give it a try.

What I'd like to see for sure is a formal rule on who can decide to
modify or change parts of glep 39. As it's the council's constitution
somehow, we have two options from my pov (besides that a former council
did decide the council itself can change it's rules):
- a large majority (at least 5 out of 7) of council members needs to ack
the change
- changes to glep 39 require a vote with all developers participating
and a large majority (2/3 or 3/4) needs to ack the suggested change

Also I'd like to require commit messages to gleps (and especially glep
39) being useful and denote based on which decision by whom that change
got made. For example the following commit message I'd consider quite
useless (at least two or three years ago):

"Add the one person one vote clause to GLEP 39 as agreed." [1]

Who did agree? Where is that noted down? ... and so on.

> An EAPI review committee could work well also. As long as we could get 
> non bias people in there.

I was thinking about that for quite some time and as long as we get some
non-biased people in there we should try that as well.

> The council should be more about community vs technical issues only.
> We have lots of top level projects within Gentoo which have simply given
> up on the council as being an outlet to accomplish anything useful.
> It should be our job to look at the projects in Gentoo. Look at the ones
> that have a healthy community and encourage and promote them in ways.

ack

> For example prefix comes to mind. It was a project I did not like at
> first. I'm not even a user. And there are things I surely don't like
> about it as is. But there is community support and it's the icing on the
> cake for some. So I'll back the fsck up and give credit where it's due.
> This is a perfectly good example of a project/fork that needs to come
> back home. Perhaps it's time to cherry pick some more stuff/people out 
> of Sunrise?

prefix is a really good example, yeah. Nearly noone knows it, but it's
really cool to have for example a virtualized windows machine running on
a linux host. The windows box then runs prefix in interix. Not that it's
really useful at all (hey, it's slow as hell) - but it's very
interesting that such things are possible and it's definitively an
eyecatcher on expos. prefix is one of Gentoo's most underrated projects.

As for Sunrise I do think that's what we already do - but: getting users
more actively involved in Sunrise makes them happy, plus it's easier for
us to recruit new developers. Therefore: push Sunrise! I very much
disliked how the Sunrise project has been started some years ago, but in
the end we do need to integrate it a tad better to make it even more
useful for both users and developers.

> desultory points out any two council members can decide to approve anything, 
> and that decision is considered to be equivalent to a full council vote
> until the next meeting. I vaguely recall that rule. I'm not sure about you, 
> but I think that is a little to much power to put in the hands of a few.
> Any dev mind if we dump that power?

It's quite much power in quite a few hands, but in the end that's some
kind of "last resort rule". All council members should be smart enough
(and i do consider all of us being smart enough) to know when that "last
resort" becomes active. Therefore I think it doesn't hurt to have such a
rule in place. 

> Meetings will likely go back to one time per month and be +m with +v be
> handed out per request with open chat pre/post meetings.  The reason for
> this is to keep the meetings on-track. I won't engage in endless
> discussions. Facts can be presented. They will be reviewed on merit,
> technical and social.
> 
> The reason the meetings should go back to monthly is to allow those who
> are council members in Gentoo to accomplish things other than the
> council only. We all have personal lives and we all have our respective
> roles we play outside of the council. Another note on meetings. The time 
> they are held currently don't fit well with my work schedule.

I'm all for going back to monthly meetings and make them a tad more
organized. As I summarized in the last few minutes of our last council
meeting - we do have rules in place to keep our meetings organized, we
just need to follow them. 

As for meeting times we can (that was mentioned somewhere?) move to 21
or 22 utc - if we're going to monthly meetings and restrict meetings to
say 60 or 90 minutes. If we have an agenda sent out a week ago everyone
should be able to be well prepared for the meeting so a restriction on
length of meetings wouldn't hurt.

If council@g.o is updated we can quickly vote on meeting times.

> Thank you all and I will try not to let you down. Unless you were one of
> the ones who wanted to me lose. Then sorry, but I'm going to have fun
> disappointing you, by doing what is best for Gentoo.

And that's basically our job: taking care of Gentoo.

> So lets have some damn fun again !@#$ 

yay!

- Tobias


[1]
http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo/xml/htdocs/proj/en/glep/glep-0039.txt?r1=1.1&r2=1.2

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[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Alec Warner]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Tobias Scherbaum<dertobi123@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Ned Ludd wrote:
>> The devs have a voice one time of the year: when it comes time to vote.
>> But what about the rest of the year? What happens when the person you
>> voted for sucks? You are mostly powerless to do anything other than be
>> really vocal in what seems like a never ending battle. That needs to
>> change. I'm not quite sure how. But I'd like to see the dev body have a
>> year-round voice in the council. Either via quick votes year-round
>> on topics or simply by having discussion in the channel. Devs should have
>> a right to voice their concerns to the council and engage in interactive
>> conversations without being labeled troll.
>
> I'm not sure about that, but we can easily give it a try.
>
> What I'd like to see for sure is a formal rule on who can decide to
> modify or change parts of glep 39. As it's the council's constitution
> somehow, we have two options from my pov (besides that a former council
> did decide the council itself can change it's rules):
> - a large majority (at least 5 out of 7) of council members needs to ack
> the change
> - changes to glep 39 require a vote with all developers participating
> and a large majority (2/3 or 3/4) needs to ack the suggested change

Just FYI, Gentoo is lucky if 1/2 of the devs vote; so I assume here
you mean large majority of the people who actually voted.

>
> Also I'd like to require commit messages to gleps (and especially glep
> 39) being useful and denote based on which decision by whom that change
> got made. For example the following commit message I'd consider quite
> useless (at least two or three years ago):
>
> "Add the one person one vote clause to GLEP 39 as agreed." [1]
>
> Who did agree? Where is that noted down? ... and so on.
>
>> An EAPI review committee could work well also. As long as we could get
>> non bias people in there.
>
> I was thinking about that for quite some time and as long as we get some
> non-biased people in there we should try that as well.
>
>> The council should be more about community vs technical issues only.
>> We have lots of top level projects within Gentoo which have simply given
>> up on the council as being an outlet to accomplish anything useful.
>> It should be our job to look at the projects in Gentoo. Look at the ones
>> that have a healthy community and encourage and promote them in ways.
>
> ack
>
>> For example prefix comes to mind. It was a project I did not like at
>> first. I'm not even a user. And there are things I surely don't like
>> about it as is. But there is community support and it's the icing on the
>> cake for some. So I'll back the fsck up and give credit where it's due.
>> This is a perfectly good example of a project/fork that needs to come
>> back home. Perhaps it's time to cherry pick some more stuff/people out
>> of Sunrise?
>
> prefix is a really good example, yeah. Nearly noone knows it, but it's
> really cool to have for example a virtualized windows machine running on
> a linux host. The windows box then runs prefix in interix. Not that it's
> really useful at all (hey, it's slow as hell) - but it's very
> interesting that such things are possible and it's definitively an
> eyecatcher on expos. prefix is one of Gentoo's most underrated projects.
>
> As for Sunrise I do think that's what we already do - but: getting users
> more actively involved in Sunrise makes them happy, plus it's easier for
> us to recruit new developers. Therefore: push Sunrise! I very much
> disliked how the Sunrise project has been started some years ago, but in
> the end we do need to integrate it a tad better to make it even more
> useful for both users and developers.
>
>> desultory points out any two council members can decide to approve anything,
>> and that decision is considered to be equivalent to a full council vote
>> until the next meeting. I vaguely recall that rule. I'm not sure about you,
>> but I think that is a little to much power to put in the hands of a few.
>> Any dev mind if we dump that power?
>
> It's quite much power in quite a few hands, but in the end that's some
> kind of "last resort rule". All council members should be smart enough
> (and i do consider all of us being smart enough) to know when that "last
> resort" becomes active. Therefore I think it doesn't hurt to have such a
> rule in place.
>
>> Meetings will likely go back to one time per month and be +m with +v be
>> handed out per request with open chat pre/post meetings.  The reason for
>> this is to keep the meetings on-track. I won't engage in endless
>> discussions. Facts can be presented. They will be reviewed on merit,
>> technical and social.
>>
>> The reason the meetings should go back to monthly is to allow those who
>> are council members in Gentoo to accomplish things other than the
>> council only. We all have personal lives and we all have our respective
>> roles we play outside of the council. Another note on meetings. The time
>> they are held currently don't fit well with my work schedule.
>
> I'm all for going back to monthly meetings and make them a tad more
> organized. As I summarized in the last few minutes of our last council
> meeting - we do have rules in place to keep our meetings organized, we
> just need to follow them.
>
> As for meeting times we can (that was mentioned somewhere?) move to 21
> or 22 utc - if we're going to monthly meetings and restrict meetings to
> say 60 or 90 minutes. If we have an agenda sent out a week ago everyone
> should be able to be well prepared for the meeting so a restriction on
> length of meetings wouldn't hurt.
>
> If council@g.o is updated we can quickly vote on meeting times.
>
>> Thank you all and I will try not to let you down. Unless you were one of
>> the ones who wanted to me lose. Then sorry, but I'm going to have fun
>> disappointing you, by doing what is best for Gentoo.
>
> And that's basically our job: taking care of Gentoo.
>
>> So lets have some damn fun again !@#$
>
> yay!
>
> - Tobias
>
>
> [1]
> http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo/xml/htdocs/proj/en/glep/glep-0039.txt?r1=1.1&r2=1.2
>

[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Tobias Scherbaum]

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Alec Warner wrote:
> > What I'd like to see for sure is a formal rule on who can decide to
> > modify or change parts of glep 39. As it's the council's constitution
> > somehow, we have two options from my pov (besides that a former council
> > did decide the council itself can change it's rules):
> > - a large majority (at least 5 out of 7) of council members needs to ack
> > the change
> > - changes to glep 39 require a vote with all developers participating
> > and a large majority (2/3 or 3/4) needs to ack the suggested change
> 
> Just FYI, Gentoo is lucky if 1/2 of the devs vote; so I assume here
> you mean large majority of the people who actually voted.

Uhrm, yeah ... of course.

- Tobias

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Re: [gentoo-dev] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Rémi Cardona]

Ned Ludd a écrit :
[snip, lots of insightful stuff I either agree with or don't really 
understand]

> So lets have some damn fun again !@#$ 

_That_ I whole heartedly agree with. Please, all of you in the new 
council, try to keep this in mind :)

Thanks

Rémi

[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Thursday 02 July 2009 10:54:05 Tobias Scherbaum wrote:
> Ned Ludd wrote:
> > The devs have a voice one time of the year: when it comes time to vote.
> > But what about the rest of the year? What happens when the person you
> > voted for sucks? You are mostly powerless to do anything other than be
> > really vocal in what seems like a never ending battle. That needs to
> > change. I'm not quite sure how. But I'd like to see the dev body have a
> > year-round voice in the council. Either via quick votes year-round
> > on topics or simply by having discussion in the channel. Devs should have
> > a right to voice their concerns to the council and engage in interactive
> > conversations without being labeled troll.
>
> I'm not sure about that, but we can easily give it a try.
>
> What I'd like to see for sure is a formal rule on who can decide to
> modify or change parts of glep 39.

we already have a formal method:
 - change is proposed ahead of time like any other business for council to 
review (which means the community sees it)
 - council votes and assuming it passed
 - the dev/council lists are notified of changes (see previous summaries for 
example)
 - if there is still no problems, then the project page/GLEP is amended 
officially

if the dev community has a problem, then it should have come up like any other 
issue along the way.  if the only way to resolve the greater dev concerns is 
with a vote, then that is how it goes.  needing a full community vote all the 
time is a huge time waste for absolutely no gain.
-mike

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[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Denis Dupeyron]

I'll have things to say about this but I'm still in the woods with
dialup until monday. So either I can get close to a fatter pipe later
today or tomorrow, or I'll do it on monday night from home.

Denis.

Re: [gentoo-dev] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Michael Higgins]

On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:33:52 -0700
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org> wrote:

> My only intention was to help offset
> dev-zero being able force the will of outside forces upon us. 
> Well that has been accomplished for now (w00t).

What is this all about? Did I miss something? Was Gentoo threatened with takeover?

Cheers,

-- 
 |\  /|        |   |          ~ ~  
 | \/ |        |---|          `|` ?
 |    |ichael  |   |iggins    \^ /
 michael.higgins[at]evolone[dot]org

Re: [gentoo-dev] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Thursday 02 July 2009 13:47:45 Michael Higgins wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:33:52 -0700 Ned Ludd wrote:
> > My only intention was to help offset
> > dev-zero being able force the will of outside forces upon us.
> > Well that has been accomplished for now (w00t).
>
> What is this all about? Did I miss something? Was Gentoo threatened with
> takeover?

please review the current/last week threads.  as a general statement, you cant 
ignore recent threads on the mailing list and then respond to newer ones going 
"what is this all about".
-mike

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[gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Christian Faulhammer]

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Hi,

in general you speak about the council but do you have any concrete
plans/goals you want to achieve?

Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>:
> The dev population is quite a strange beast. I never expected to win. 

 Nor did I, especially because you were quite low on my ballot.
Congratulations.

> The devs have a voice one time of the year: when it comes time to
> vote. But what about the rest of the year? What happens when the
> person you voted for sucks? You are mostly powerless to do anything
> other than be really vocal in what seems like a never ending battle.
> That needs to change. I'm not quite sure how. But I'd like to see the
> dev body have a year-round voice in the council. Either via quick
> votes year-round on topics or simply by having discussion in the
> channel. Devs should have a right to voice their concerns to the
> council and engage in interactive conversations without being labeled
> troll.

 We have the forums for quick votes, votify is too much to get a
picture of opinions.  So use -dev-announce and forums.

> Another one of the things I'd like to see and help reform with the
> council. First off it spends way too much time on EAPI/PMS. There is
> no reason to make the council an extension of the portage team.

 As member of the PMS team I agree, we have to reach out to more
people.  No matter how well Ciaran does the job as editor-in-chief
the process needs to be broadened to involve other groups, too.

> For example prefix comes to mind. It was a project I did not like at
> first. I'm not even a user. And there are things I surely don't like
> about it as is. But there is community support and it's the icing on
> the cake for some. So I'll back the fsck up and give credit where
> it's due. This is a perfectly good example of a project/fork that
> needs to come back home. Perhaps it's time to cherry pick some more
> stuff/people out of Sunrise?

 Fully agree here, my devhood is a product of Sunrise.
 
> desultory points out any two council members can decide to approve
> anything, and that decision is considered to be equivalent to a full
> council vote until the next meeting. I vaguely recall that rule. I'm
> not sure about you, but I think that is a little to much power to put
> in the hands of a few. Any dev mind if we dump that power?

 Maybe extend that to three, but leave such a emergency measure in
place. 

> Meetings will likely go back to one time per month and be +m with +v
> be handed out per request with open chat pre/post meetings.  The
> reason for this is to keep the meetings on-track. I won't engage in
> endless discussions. Facts can be presented. They will be reviewed on
> merit, technical and social.

 Agree.
 
> The reason the meetings should go back to monthly is to allow those
> who are council members in Gentoo to accomplish things other than the
> council only. We all have personal lives and we all have our
> respective roles we play outside of the council. Another note on
> meetings. The time they are held currently don't fit well with my
> work schedule.

 That you have to discuss with your fellow council members.

> So lets have some damn fun again !@#$ 

 Oh yeah!

V-Li

-- 
Christian Faulhammer, Gentoo Lisp project
<URL:http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-lisp on FreeNode

<URL:http://gentoo.faulhammer.org/>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 22:14:25 +0200
Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Another one of the things I'd like to see and help reform with the
> > council. First off it spends way too much time on EAPI/PMS. There is
> > no reason to make the council an extension of the portage team.
> 
>  As member of the PMS team I agree, we have to reach out to more
> people.  No matter how well Ciaran does the job as editor-in-chief
> the process needs to be broadened to involve other groups, too.

Which groups who would like to be able to contribute currently feel
that they can't, why do they feel that and why haven't they said so?

Really, the only big issues we've had with EAPI work are getting Portage
support and working around a Council that wants to both micro-manage
every last detail of every last feature and only put in an hour of work
every two weeks.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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[gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Christian Faulhammer]

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Hi,

Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com>:

> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 22:14:25 +0200
> Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > > Another one of the things I'd like to see and help reform with the
> > > council. First off it spends way too much time on EAPI/PMS. There
> > > is no reason to make the council an extension of the portage team.
> > 
> >  As member of the PMS team I agree, we have to reach out to more
> > people.  No matter how well Ciaran does the job as editor-in-chief
> > the process needs to be broadened to involve other groups, too.
> 
> Which groups who would like to be able to contribute currently feel
> that they can't, why do they feel that and why haven't they said so?

 For example people from the other package managers apart from
Paludis.  What we need is a more straight forward way for new
features...yes, some measures are already being worked out, but there is
still work to do.

> Really, the only big issues we've had with EAPI work are getting
> Portage support and working around a Council that wants to both
> micro-manage every last detail of every last feature and only put in
> an hour of work every two weeks.

 Discussion of EAPI features took place on the -dev mailing list
involving council members, so one hour every two weeks is quite
exaggerated.

V-Li

-- 
Christian Faulhammer, Gentoo Lisp project
<URL:http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-lisp on FreeNode

<URL:http://gentoo.faulhammer.org/>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 22:29:39 +0200
Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Which groups who would like to be able to contribute currently feel
> > that they can't, why do they feel that and why haven't they said so?
> 
>  For example people from the other package managers apart from
> Paludis.

Zac's said he's not particularly interested in the deciding upon new
features part, and despite that there was considerable Portage
influence upon all three new EAPIs. The Pkgcore people haven't tried
pushing for anything as far as I know. The option's there for them, but
they haven't expressed any interest.

Incidentally, less than half of the things in EAPI 3 were of an origin
that could even remotely be considered Paludisish...

> What we need is a more straight forward way for new
> features...yes, some measures are already being worked out, but there
> is still work to do.

Unfortunately much of the complexity comes from the constraints we're
forced to work with...

> > Really, the only big issues we've had with EAPI work are getting
> > Portage support and working around a Council that wants to both
> > micro-manage every last detail of every last feature and only put in
> > an hour of work every two weeks.
> 
>  Discussion of EAPI features took place on the -dev mailing list
> involving council members, so one hour every two weeks is quite
> exaggerated.

Sure, some of the old Council were extremely helpful in providing
opinions beforehand, in doing the prep work before meetings and in not
springing things at the last second. Others insisted upon not reading
what they were asked to vote upon before the meeting (or even before
voting upon it), and then raising queries, objections and alternatives
that were either already addressed, not at all relevant or obviously
unworkable. That's what dragged the process out for so long.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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[gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ned Ludd]

On Thu, 2009-07-02 at 22:14 +0200, Christian Faulhammer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> in general you speak about the council but do you have any concrete
> plans/goals you want to achieve?

I think we are in the information gathering phase right now on how to
best proceed. So nothing concrete as of this point. More abstract ideas
at this point.

> Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>:
> > The dev population is quite a strange beast. I never expected to win. 
> 
>  Nor did I, especially because you were quite low on my ballot.
> Congratulations.
> 
> > The devs have a voice one time of the year: when it comes time to
> > vote. But what about the rest of the year? What happens when the
> > person you voted for sucks? You are mostly powerless to do anything
> > other than be really vocal in what seems like a never ending battle.
> > That needs to change. I'm not quite sure how. But I'd like to see the
> > dev body have a year-round voice in the council. Either via quick
> > votes year-round on topics or simply by having discussion in the
> > channel. Devs should have a right to voice their concerns to the
> > council and engage in interactive conversations without being labeled
> > troll.
> 
>  We have the forums for quick votes, votify is too much to get a
> picture of opinions.  So use -dev-announce and forums.
> 
> > Another one of the things I'd like to see and help reform with the
> > council. First off it spends way too much time on EAPI/PMS. There is
> > no reason to make the council an extension of the portage team.
> 
>  As member of the PMS team I agree, we have to reach out to more
> people.  No matter how well Ciaran does the job as editor-in-chief
> the process needs to be broadened to involve other groups, too.
> 
> > For example prefix comes to mind. It was a project I did not like at
> > first. I'm not even a user. And there are things I surely don't like
> > about it as is. But there is community support and it's the icing on
> > the cake for some. So I'll back the fsck up and give credit where
> > it's due. This is a perfectly good example of a project/fork that
> > needs to come back home. Perhaps it's time to cherry pick some more
> > stuff/people out of Sunrise?
> 
>  Fully agree here, my devhood is a product of Sunrise.
>  
> > desultory points out any two council members can decide to approve
> > anything, and that decision is considered to be equivalent to a full
> > council vote until the next meeting. I vaguely recall that rule. I'm
> > not sure about you, but I think that is a little to much power to put
> > in the hands of a few. Any dev mind if we dump that power?
> 
>  Maybe extend that to three, but leave such a emergency measure in
> place. 
> 
> > Meetings will likely go back to one time per month and be +m with +v
> > be handed out per request with open chat pre/post meetings.  The
> > reason for this is to keep the meetings on-track. I won't engage in
> > endless discussions. Facts can be presented. They will be reviewed on
> > merit, technical and social.
> 
>  Agree.
>  
> > The reason the meetings should go back to monthly is to allow those
> > who are council members in Gentoo to accomplish things other than the
> > council only. We all have personal lives and we all have our
> > respective roles we play outside of the council. Another note on
> > meetings. The time they are held currently don't fit well with my
> > work schedule.
> 
>  That you have to discuss with your fellow council members.
> 
> > So lets have some damn fun again !@#$ 
> 
>  Oh yeah!
> 
> V-Li



-- 
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Linux

[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

Tobias Scherbaum wrote:
> Alec Warner wrote:
>>> What I'd like to see for sure is a formal rule on who can decide to
>>> modify or change parts of glep 39. As it's the council's constitution
>>> somehow, we have two options from my pov (besides that a former council
>>> did decide the council itself can change it's rules):
>>> - a large majority (at least 5 out of 7) of council members needs to ack
>>> the change
>>> - changes to glep 39 require a vote with all developers participating
>>> and a large majority (2/3 or 3/4) needs to ack the suggested change
>> Just FYI, Gentoo is lucky if 1/2 of the devs vote; so I assume here
>> you mean large majority of the people who actually voted.
> 
> Uhrm, yeah ... of course.

I have a few ideas about this that I'll have to put in writing and share
later, but let me start by proposing that for such a change we require
the support of at least 2/3 of the devs that vote *and* a minimum of 1/3
of all devs.
By requiring the support of at least 1/3 of all devs, we can ensure that
it won't be possible to have extreme events as getting a policy change
approved by > 90% of the voting devs which happen to represent < 10% of
all devs. OTOH, requiring 2/3 of the voting devs might prove to be to
hard in an election with a high turnout - afaicr we didn't have > 60%
turnout in any election in at least the last 2 years.

> - Tobias

-- 
Regards,

Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / SPARC / KDE

[gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Duncan]

Tobias Scherbaum <dertobi123@gentoo.org> posted
1246546445.6186.33.camel@homer.ob.libexec.de, excerpted below, on  Thu, 02
Jul 2009 16:54:05 +0200:

> Ned Ludd wrote:
>> I'd like to see the dev body have a year-round voice in the council.
>> Either via quick votes year-round on topics or simply by having
>> discussion in the channel.

> What I'd like to see for sure is a formal rule on who can decide to
> modify or change parts of glep 39. As it's the council's constitution
> somehow, we have two options from my pov (besides that a former council
> did decide the council itself can change it's rules): - a large majority
> (at least 5 out of 7) of council members needs to ack the change
> - changes to glep 39 require a vote with all developers participating
> and a large majority (2/3 or 3/4) needs to ack the suggested change

[posting to -devel only, as gmane has council as one-way, appropriately]

A vote of all developers is a bit steep, but maybe that's the intent.  As 
already mentioned, tho, it'd have to be a super-majority of those voting.

But the 5/7 supermajority rule for council to change its own constitution 
is a really good idea, IMO.  That's a 71% supermajority, and should be 
enough, IMO.  I've always been uncomfortable with the simple majority 
changing its own constitution or bylaws idea, Gentoo council or 
elsewhere.  It's just too unstable for the constitutional level.

>> An EAPI review committee could work well also. As long as we could get
>> non bias people in there.
> 
> I was thinking about that for quite some time and as long as we get some
> non-biased people in there we should try that as well.

IMO, the "official PM implementation required before final approval" 
serves well enough as a practical cap on things, there.  As long as that 
is understood, and council approves a recommendation, then stamps the 
final spec when implemented, an EAPI committee can't go entirely 
renegade, no matter who's on it.

Plus, the committee approach was effectively what we did for EAPI-3 
already, except that arguably council was too hands-on, and more of the 
debate happened on the dev list and on council than was perhaps 
appropriate.

We already have a list for EAPI/PMS discussion, and I believe 
announcements and proposals can be made to dev (and/or council) lists 
with followups set to dev, for discussion.  If we simply use what we have 
and follow that rule, those interested enough to debate it there, 
effectively form the committee, regardless of whether there's an official 
one or not.

What remains, then, would be for the council to choose a spokeperson to 
keep them informed of updates and present the details.  That person 
should be seen as reasonably unbiased in ordered to make it work well for 
all sides, and they should be given a clear mandate from council that 
will effectively make them chairman of the committee, since they 
represent it, whether it's formalized or not.

Then let that spokesperson present the recommendation to council, 
preferably in written form, perhaps with a 10 minute verbal meeting time-
limit, with the details hashed out however it gets hashed out on the EAPI/
PMS list (council shouldn't need to interfere there, except by creating 
the spokesperson position, with said spokeperson serving at the pleasure 
of the council, so they can be removed and someone else appointed, if 
deemed necessary), with anyone from that list, or dev, or user, able to 
present an objection, again preferably in written form, with say a 2-
minute verbal argument meeting time-limit.

Then after the presentation, vote.  As with EAPI-3, do it in two stages, 
preliminary approval, then after implementation, final approval.  Total 
in-meeting time, x2: 10 minutes for spokesperson verbal presentation of 
written position, made available X days pre-meeting, 2 minutes x N people 
for independent support/disagree statements (say two people, 4 minutes), 
one minute for administrative (transitions, etc), 5 minutes at final 
approval for portage lead if he wishes, 5 minutes for voting.  Total 20 
minutes meeting time for preliminary approval, 25 minutes for final 
approval, 45 minutes over two meetings.  If it's voted down, it's sent 
back for further revisions, and won't be scheduled for another chance at 
council meeting approval for six months.

If the council members haven't done their homework and aren't ready to 
vote at the meeting, it reflects badly on them.  If the EAPI committee 
spokesperson doesn't have the written presentation ready in time, or 
can't manage his 10 minute verbal presentation, or if there's more than 
2-3 people lining up for their 2-minute slot to oppose it, it reflects 
badly on him, and the council should consider a different spokesperson.

Bottom line, IMO, the resources are already there, as are, to some 
extent, the rules.  All council needs to do is find and approve a single 
reasonably non-biased person to be a spokesperson, and enforce the rules 
on its own time, with everyone working together to enforce followups to 
the EAPI/PMS list for anything coming up on dev of that nature.

> Therefore: push Sunrise!

++  (I already posted agreement on prefix.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

[gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Duncan]

"Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto" <jmbsvicetto@gentoo.org> posted
4A4D97D5.10407@gentoo.org, excerpted below, on  Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:32:05
+0000:

> I have a few ideas about this that I'll have to put in writing and share
> later, but let me start by proposing that for such a change we require
> the support of at least 2/3 of the devs that vote *and* a minimum of 1/3
> of all devs.
> By requiring the support of at least 1/3 of all devs, we can ensure that
> it won't be possible to have extreme events as getting a policy change
> approved by > 90% of the voting devs which happen to represent < 10% of
> all devs. OTOH, requiring 2/3 of the voting devs might prove to be to
> hard in an election with a high turnout - afaicr we didn't have > 60%
> turnout in any election in at least the last 2 years.

I don't believe that's workable.  See for instance the issues getting the 
Gentoo Foundation's bylaws approved.  A 2/3 super-majority of voting devs 
is fine, but the 1/3 of total devs requirement can be problematic, given 
that some devs simply aren't interested in politics enough to vote at 
all, ever.  We don't want to be in the situation the Foundation was in.  
Now, if the total devs requirement was much lower, say 10%, then maybe, 
but if we're going that low, is it even worth bothering?

So I'd say keep it to a 2/3 super-majority of voting devs, and leave it 
at that.  If people don't what 2/3 of say a 10 % voting minority decided, 
well, they should have voted.  (And if /enough/ people don't like it, 
have another vote and undo it.)

For much the same reasons, tho, I favor the council super-majority idea.  
Certainly, a simple majority changing what is effectively Gentoo's 
constitution is distressingly unstable, but 5/7 is 71%, and if no more 
than two council members can be found to oppose a move that needs to be 
stopped, we're in trouble, regardless.  Plus, they ran for the job, so 
can be considered to be politically active enough to actually vote, 
unlike devs in the general case.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Luca Barbato]

Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
> I have a few ideas about this that I'll have to put in writing and share
> later, but let me start by proposing that for such a change we require
> the support of at least 2/3 of the devs that vote *and* a minimum of 1/3
> of all devs.

I'd use absolute majority even if it is more strict.

lu

-- 

Luca Barbato
Gentoo Council Member
Gentoo/linux Gentoo/PPC
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Brian Harring]

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On Thu, Jul 02, 2009 at 09:43:53PM +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 22:29:39 +0200
> Christian Faulhammer <fauli@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > > Which groups who would like to be able to contribute currently feel
> > > that they can't, why do they feel that and why haven't they said so?
> > 
> >  For example people from the other package managers apart from
> > Paludis.
> 
> Zac's said he's not particularly interested in the deciding upon new
> features part, and despite that there was considerable Portage
> influence upon all three new EAPIs. The Pkgcore people haven't tried
> pushing for anything as far as I know. The option's there for them, but
> they haven't expressed any interest.

Actually pkgcore folk have pushed for stuff.  mtime preservation is a 
simple example of things I've pushed for- at the time implemented by 
portage/pkgcore, eliminates the orphan potential for .pyc and other 
generated files (iow, very useful).  My personal opinion on what goes 
into PMS is that it's typically only stuff that paludis supports 
already (or is a direction paludis wants to go towards).  Could be 
wrong, but that's my opinion of it via watching/involvement in it from 
it's public inception.

In terms of involvement in PMS, frankly it's not worth it from where 
I'm sitting due to ciarans behaviour.  Simplest explanation possible 
there is that w/ ciaran being effectively the loudest voice PMS wise, 
combined w/ behaviour involving sitting on bugs in competing managers 
(including instances where that manager isn't compliant w/ PMS) and 
popping them out at random times on the ML to rip on the manager, 
it's not worth dealing with it.

It's not a matter of having thicker skin- it's literally a question of 
worth.  Is it worth trying to have a voice if it means exposing 
yourself to BS behaviour?  Via that line of thought y'all should be 
able to understand my personal choice involvement wise.

It's basically a happier existance to just implement the spec, and 
keep the head down ;)

My two cents on it, for what it's worth.
~brian

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Richard Freeman]

Luca Barbato wrote:
> Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
>> I have a few ideas about this that I'll have to put in writing and share
>> later, but let me start by proposing that for such a change we require
>> the support of at least 2/3 of the devs that vote *and* a minimum of 1/3
>> of all devs.
> 
> I'd use absolute majority even if it is more strict.
> 

The only concern I have with these kinds of approaches is that right now 
we tend to be pretty liberal with allowing people to be devs even if 
they aren't heavily involved in gentoo.  As long as their commits are of 
sufficient quality that isn't a big deal.  However, it does allow the 
voting rolls to get pretty big with people that don't have a huge stake 
in the outcome of an election.

Organizations that tend to have supermajority policies tend to have 
other kinds of requirements on dues or activity, and they also tend to 
routinely clean out their rolls.  A supermajority policy might work fine 
if we also had a policy that a dev who fails to vote in two consecutive 
elections gets the boot.  I'm not sure that we really want that kind of 
a policy, however.

My feeling is that if you don't care enough to vote, you should have to 
live with the consequences.  Now, all elections of any kind should be 
announced well in advance, and should span a period of a few weeks (as 
they currently do).  If an issue is particularly critical and nobody can 
get around to voting for it in a 2 weeks span while there are hundreds 
of arguments raging in IRC and the lists, then I'm not sure we can take 
their silence as a vote of disapproval.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-council] A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Richard Freeman]

Luca Barbato wrote:
> Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
>> I have a few ideas about this that I'll have to put in writing and share
>> later, but let me start by proposing that for such a change we require
>> the support of at least 2/3 of the devs that vote *and* a minimum of 1/3
>> of all devs.
> 
> I'd use absolute majority even if it is more strict.
> 

The only concern I have with these kinds of approaches is that right now 
we tend to be pretty liberal with allowing people to be devs even if 
they aren't heavily involved in gentoo.  As long as their commits are of 
sufficient quality that isn't a big deal.  However, it does allow the 
voting rolls to get pretty big with people that don't have a huge stake 
in the outcome of an election.

Organizations that tend to have supermajority policies tend to have 
other kinds of requirements on dues or activity, and they also tend to 
routinely clean out their rolls.  A supermajority policy might work fine 
if we also had a policy that a dev who fails to vote in two consecutive 
elections gets the boot.  I'm not sure that we really want that kind of 
a policy, however.

My feeling is that if you don't care enough to vote, you should have to 
live with the consequences.  Now, all elections of any kind should be 
announced well in advance, and should span a period of a few weeks (as 
they currently do).  If an issue is particularly critical and nobody can 
get around to voting for it in a 2 weeks span while there are hundreds 
of arguments raging in IRC and the lists, then I'm not sure we can take 
their silence as a vote of disapproval.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 3 Jul 2009 02:08:48 -0700
Brian Harring <ferringb@gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually pkgcore folk have pushed for stuff.  mtime preservation is a 
> simple example of things I've pushed for- at the time implemented by 
> portage/pkgcore, eliminates the orphan potential for .pyc and other 
> generated files (iow, very useful).

The mtime preservation implemented by (recent -- earlier versions
mirror what Paludis still does) Portage versions has problems that
you're fully aware of. We're looking at fixing it properly, including
addressing the problems you're trying to brush under the carpet, for
EAPI 4 rather than EAPI 3 simply because the Council chose to freeze
EAPI 3 before a full solution had been proposed.

> My personal opinion on what goes into PMS is that it's typically only
> stuff that paludis supports already (or is a direction paludis wants
> to go towards).  Could be wrong, but that's my opinion of it via
> watching/involvement in it from it's public inception.

Er, not in the least bit.

Out of the 7 features in EAPI 2:

* One was a last minute workaround for a Portage behaviour change that
  broke things.
* Five were feature requests from Gentoo developers.
* One was a response concocted by Paludis people in response to a
  common problem described by Gentoo developers.

Out of the 18 features in EAPI 3:

* 14 were feature requests from Gentoo developers.
* 1.5 were directly from Portage.
* 1.5 were technicalities worked out based upon real world testing of
  proposed features by Paludis people.
* One was a colaboration between the Portage and Paludis people.

Paludis had support for nine of these beforehand.

> In terms of involvement in PMS, frankly it's not worth it from where 
> I'm sitting due to ciarans behaviour.  Simplest explanation possible 
> there is that w/ ciaran being effectively the loudest voice PMS wise,

...because I do most of the work, and I'm not interested in spending
weeks discussing proposals I think are a really bad idea with the
Council. There's nothing to stop you from doing that if you believe
something should be in an EAPI -- you're welcome to champion your own
feature requests.

Also, I'll remind you that our current "rejected patches" list is
sitting at approximately one item...
 
> combined w/ behaviour involving sitting on bugs in competing managers

I've given up looking at pkgcore's code or trying to test it. The only
bugs I'm aware of in pkgcore are those that've been reported by other
people.
 
-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Steven J Long]

Brian Harring wrote:

> In terms of involvement in PMS, frankly it's not worth it from where
> I'm sitting due to ciarans behaviour.
>
> It's not a matter of having thicker skin- it's literally a question of
> worth.  Is it worth trying to have a voice if it means exposing
> yourself to BS behaviour?

I'll second that; it's impossible to discuss on bugzilla, as you just get
trolled or spammed. The process appears to be moving to "get discussion off
ML and onto bugzilla where it can be killed" which appears to be a
subversion of things, from where I'm sitting; I thought the idea was to
have ML discussion _before_ stuff was proposed for a new EAPI?

You know, so that alternative approaches could be considered, the problem
defined adequately, and so on, with reference to the wider, knowledgeable
readership.

As it is, we're now getting long lists of stuff dumped on to the ML as "the
new EAPI" with little review beyond a post-hoc justification that "a Gentoo
dev filed a bug asking for it."

NB: I'm happy for there to be discussion via bugzilla, but not under
ciaranm's supervision. After all, he's been proven to have issues when it
comes to social interaction, which is pretty much essential to leading a
project. And even then, I think ideas should be mooted to the list (via the
RFC mechanism?) in line with the agreed process.

The PMS list has the same problem: it's seen as ciaranm's domain, and we all
know he doesn't set a collaborative tone, but rather one of conflict, which
anyone on a clock can't be bothered with. Regrettably, if we don't get our
2c in, which is a hassle, we end up with more hassle further down the line.
-- 
#friendly-coders -- We're friendly but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:49:34 +0100
Steven J Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> I'll second that; it's impossible to discuss on bugzilla, as you just
> get trolled or spammed.

Funny. Other people manage just fine. Perhaps you should consider that
it's your behaviour that's the issue here. In the mean time, please
provide examples of PMS bugs where you feel you've been unable to
provide a useful contribution -- I had a look through bugs with your
comments in the PMS/EAPI component, and I found:

182028: You post a 'solution' that doesn't solve the requirements, and
then go off and start hurling abuse at David when he tells you that.

201499: You suggest a few things involving metadata.xml, and you are
told why that can't be done. The discussion continues productively.

230725: You helpfully implement a patch. The Council decides it doesn't
like the feature in question and rejects it.

250077: You jump in the middle of a discussion and start muddying the
waters with something we're not addressing.

> The process appears to be moving to "get discussion off ML and onto
> bugzilla where it can be killed" which appears to be a subversion of
> things, from where I'm sitting; I thought the idea was to have ML
> discussion _before_ stuff was proposed for a new EAPI?

That's up to the developers that file the bug. The PMS team has been
fairly flexible in how it handles input, although per Council request
we're going to try to do everything on bugzilla for EAPI 4.

> As it is, we're now getting long lists of stuff dumped on to the ML
> as "the new EAPI" with little review beyond a post-hoc justification
> that "a Gentoo dev filed a bug asking for it."

This is a no-win situation. When I do review features and suggest
modifications or not including them, I'm accused of meddling and only
allowing through things I like. When I don't, I'm accused of allowing
features through without review.

Also, did you miss the whole extensive review thing the Council and
any developer who feels like it does? I shall remind you that a good
number of features on the EAPI 3 proposal didn't make it.

> NB: I'm happy for there to be discussion via bugzilla, but not under
> ciaranm's supervision. After all, he's been proven to have issues
> when it comes to social interaction, which is pretty much essential
> to leading a project.

I'll agree I get confused easily when people start sockpuppeting or
posting pages of incoherent nonsense to unrelated bugs. If you can find
someone capable of dealing with the odd bad apple who does that then
I'd be happy for them to handle that part.

> And even then, I think ideas should be mooted to the list (via the
> RFC mechanism?) in line with the agreed process.

The agreed process is to go to bugzilla, not the list.

> The PMS list has the same problem: it's seen as ciaranm's domain, and
> we all know he doesn't set a collaborative tone, but rather one of
> conflict, which anyone on a clock can't be bothered with.

Please point to examples of conflict on the PMS mailing list. Also, I
shall remind you that the PMS list was a Council decision and that it
was primarily to replace the alias we were using for sending patches
for review -- that's still what it's being used for.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Denis Dupeyron]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Ciaran
McCreesh<ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps you should consider that it's your behaviour that's the issue here.

It's both your behaviors, because they're extremely similar. Except
that you seem to have more time available than slong to express your
defensive personality on our various media.

I'm going to have to ask the two of you to stop arguing in public,
because very frankly we don't care. Plus it's completely off-topic and
an abuse of our mailing-list system.

Thanks,
Denis.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 10:09:09 -0600
Denis Dupeyron <calchan@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Ciaran
> McCreesh<ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps you should consider that it's your behaviour that's the
> > issue here.
> 
> It's both your behaviors, because they're extremely similar. Except
> that you seem to have more time available than slong to express your
> defensive personality on our various media.

No, Denis, it's not. I contribute productively and usefully, despite
repeated pot-shots from the peanut gallery. Steve pops up every now
and again and tries to disrupt things.

> I'm going to have to ask the two of you to stop arguing in public,
> because very frankly we don't care. Plus it's completely off-topic and
> an abuse of our mailing-list system.

I would be entirely happy if you could get the people whose stated aim
is to disrupt PMS and / or third party package managers to stop
poisoning the atmosphere.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Rémi Cardona]

Le 07/07/2009 18:20, Ciaran McCreesh a écrit :
> I would be entirely happy if you could get the people whose stated aim
> is to disrupt PMS and / or third party package managers to stop
> poisoning the atmosphere.

Then _please_ for the love of God just _ignore_ him.

Thank you

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:34:32 +0200
Rémi Cardona <remi@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Le 07/07/2009 18:20, Ciaran McCreesh a écrit :
> > I would be entirely happy if you could get the people whose stated
> > aim is to disrupt PMS and / or third party package managers to stop
> > poisoning the atmosphere.
> 
> Then _please_ for the love of God just _ignore_ him.

I tried that. Unfortunately, then people consider his arguments to be
valid (without having read them). Any objection to a proposal that
hasn't been addressed every time it has been raised, regardless of the
merit of the objection, is considered by the Council to be grounds to
delay things indefinitely or reject them.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Denis Dupeyron]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Ciaran
McCreesh<ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I contribute productively and usefully

This should have gone in private but I want it to be public because
you and others apparently do not get it. The fact that you're
contributing or not does not give you or anybody else the right to
behave improperly on our mailing lists, forums, or else. There is no
amount of contribution that would compensate for even the slightest
inadequate behavior. Please everybody, print that and pin it above
your monitor.

> repeated pot-shots from the peanut gallery.

Thanks for the good example. Please, you and everybody else, note that
this above is considered abrasive by most of us. If you do this, not
only do you pollute our mailing-lists, but you also attract more
abrasive behavior from others. You only get what you deserve, so if
you need to cry on somebody's shoulder then go see your mom. Do not
express your hurt feelings on this list, we don't care. Not talking
about making an ass of yourself for being so childish.

> Steve pops up every now and again and tries to disrupt things.

You do the exact same in you own way. Please allow me to take that
beam from your eye.

Now, I suggest you do not reply to this mail in public as this would,
again, be off-topic. Feel free to contact me in private though, I'll
be happy to discuss that with you in case you need to.

Denis.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Nirbheek Chauhan]

Just putting some weight behind Remi's post

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Rémi Cardona<remi@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Le 07/07/2009 18:20, Ciaran McCreesh a écrit :
>>
>> I would be entirely happy if you could get the people whose stated aim
>> is to disrupt PMS and / or third party package managers to stop
>> poisoning the atmosphere.
>
> Then _please_ for the love of God just _ignore_ him.
>

Yes. Thank you.


-- 
~Nirbheek Chauhan

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 11:55:02 -0600
Denis Dupeyron <calchan@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Ciaran
> McCreesh<ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > I contribute productively and usefully
> 
> This should have gone in private but I want it to be public because
> you and others apparently do not get it.

No, this needs to be in public. You're trying to 'reform', but you're
going about it completely the wrong way. Rather than addressing the
problems and fixing them, you're trying to bury them.

Moving conversations in private and making channels +m does not fix the
root cause. It just allows those who are trying to disrupt things to
get their way.

> The fact that you're contributing or not does not give you or anybody
> else the right to behave improperly on our mailing lists, forums, or
> else. There is no amount of contribution that would compensate for
> even the slightest inadequate behavior. Please everybody, print that
> and pin it above your monitor.

So say someone were to say "My aim is to make every project you're
associated with fail, and to disrupt everything you do in any way I
can", and then repeatedly pop up and start posting nonsense. What would
a proper response be?

Bear in mind that "ignore them" is not an answer, since ignoring them
leads to their stated aim of disrupting things to succeed. The Council
has on several occasions postponed and rejected proposals because the
trolls haven't been answered.

> > repeated pot-shots from the peanut gallery.
> 
> Thanks for the good example. Please, you and everybody else, note that
> this above is considered abrasive by most of us.

I'd call that an entirely appropriate description of the behaviour of a
small group of people who have taken to deliberately disrupting
everything they can in some way connect to me. If you feel that's
inappropriate, please provide what you feel would be a better
description of the following:

http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/msg_09dcc806480b88940f4559f796f1cebf.xml

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182028#c10

http://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=124392201802899&w=2

http://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=124615139601592&w=2

http://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=123898857224257&w=2

http://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=123898982124997&w=2

< trelane> ciaranm: I want Paludis to fail. It's unhealthy (or at least
the loudest and most visible of it's devs are) for Gentoo.

< trelane> lets be VERY clear on that point. So long as Paludis, and
the culture it creates are unhealthy for Gentoo I want it to fail.

< trelane> ciaranm: that's put in a manner that seems to be a somewhat
knee-jerk reaction. It should be clear that opposing you and everything
you do was an initiative I started only after careful consideration.

> If you do this, not only do you pollute our mailing-lists, but you
> also attract more abrasive behavior from others. You only get what
> you deserve, so if you need to cry on somebody's shoulder then go see
> your mom. Do not express your hurt feelings on this list, we don't
> care. Not talking about making an ass of yourself for being so
> childish.

I don't have hurt feelings, and I don't wish to cry on anyone's
shoulder. I want you to stop trying to bury issues and start fixing
them.

> > Steve pops up every now and again and tries to disrupt things.
> 
> You do the exact same in you own way. Please allow me to take that
> beam from your eye.

No, my goal is to help give Gentoo the progress it needs. There is a
huge difference between that and having a stated aim of trying to make
projects fail.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Alright,

seeing that things are getting out of hand again, let me reply as a
member of the userrel team.

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 11:55:02 -0600
> Denis Dupeyron <calchan@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Ciaran
>> McCreesh<ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> I contribute productively and usefully
>> This should have gone in private but I want it to be public because
>> you and others apparently do not get it.
> 
> No, this needs to be in public. You're trying to 'reform', but you're
> going about it completely the wrong way. Rather than addressing the
> problems and fixing them, you're trying to bury them.
> 
> Moving conversations in private and making channels +m does not fix the
> root cause. It just allows those who are trying to disrupt things to
> get their way.
> 
>> The fact that you're contributing or not does not give you or anybody
>> else the right to behave improperly on our mailing lists, forums, or
>> else. There is no amount of contribution that would compensate for
>> even the slightest inadequate behavior. Please everybody, print that
>> and pin it above your monitor.

You and everyone else is entitled to an opinion and Gentoo has showed
time and again to be a very open community allowing people to
participate in discussions.
However, as Denis was pointing out, no amount of contribution entitles
anyone (developer or not) to abuse our communication mediums and act
inappropriately.

> So say someone were to say "My aim is to make every project you're
> associated with fail, and to disrupt everything you do in any way I
> can", and then repeatedly pop up and start posting nonsense. What would
> a proper response be?
> 
> Bear in mind that "ignore them" is not an answer, since ignoring them
> leads to their stated aim of disrupting things to succeed. The Council
> has on several occasions postponed and rejected proposals because the
> trolls haven't been answered.

As Denis has already stated we're not interested in the disputes between
you, paludis, exherbo and some other users or projects (funtoo?).
This ml is about Gentoo not about your (ciaranm, igli, trelane, etc) pet
projects.

>>> repeated pot-shots from the peanut gallery.
>> Thanks for the good example. Please, you and everybody else, note that
>> this above is considered abrasive by most of us.
> 
> I'd call that an entirely appropriate description of the behaviour of a
> small group of people who have taken to deliberately disrupting
> everything they can in some way connect to me. If you feel that's
> inappropriate, please provide what you feel would be a better
> description of the following:

As you know very well, quite a few people would qualify your own
behaviour at times like that. So this is one of those cases that you
should start by looking at the mirror.

<snip>

We all have plenty examples of your bad behaviour, so let's not go down
that route.

>>> Steve pops up every now and again and tries to disrupt things.
>> You do the exact same in you own way. Please allow me to take that
>> beam from your eye.
> 
> No, my goal is to help give Gentoo the progress it needs. There is a
> huge difference between that and having a stated aim of trying to make
> projects fail.

Some people seem to think that the best way for Gentoo to progress as
they would like, they need to ensure that you don't get to influence
Gentoo as they consider your proposals compromise Gentoo's future.

But again, we (Gentoo developers and community) are getting tired of all
the "bile" flying around. Please stop with that.

- --
Regards,

Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / SPARC / KDE
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:51:05 +0000
"Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto" <jmbsvicetto@gentoo.org> wrote:
> As Denis has already stated we're not interested in the disputes
> between you, paludis, exherbo and some other users or projects
> (funtoo?). This ml is about Gentoo not about your (ciaranm, igli,
> trelane, etc) pet projects.

We were discussing the Gentoo PMS project, and the Council's
involvement therein.

> As you know very well, quite a few people would qualify your own
> behaviour at times like that. So this is one of those cases that you
> should start by looking at the mirror.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> We all have plenty examples of your bad behaviour, so let's not go
> down that route.

Please point to examples of where I've said that I want a project to
fail, or that I plan to oppose absolutely everything someone does
regardless of merit. Please also point to examples of where I've said
that I want anything other than what's best for Gentoo.

> Some people seem to think that the best way for Gentoo to progress as
> they would like, they need to ensure that you don't get to influence
> Gentoo as they consider your proposals compromise Gentoo's future.

Then they should address each proposal on its own merits. That isn't
what's being discussed, though. We're discussing a small group of
people whose stated aim is to disrupt anything they can associate with
me in any way. How is that in any way good for Gentoo's future?

> But again, we (Gentoo developers and community) are getting tired of
> all the "bile" flying around. Please stop with that.

Then please start by addressing the part of the email you snipped out,
and explain how you expect the Gentoo PMS project to operate under
those kinds of conditions, and why userrel hasn't stepped in when a
small group of users have said that they intend to sabotage a Gentoo
project.

- -- 
Ciaran McCreesh
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Andrew D Kirch]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> < trelane> ciaranm: I want Paludis to fail. It's unhealthy (or at least
> the loudest and most visible of it's devs are) for Gentoo.
>
> < trelane> lets be VERY clear on that point. So long as Paludis, and
> the culture it creates are unhealthy for Gentoo I want it to fail.
>
> < trelane> ciaranm: that's put in a manner that seems to be a somewhat
> knee-jerk reaction. It should be clear that opposing you and everything
> you do was an initiative I started only after careful consideration.
>
>   

Ciaran, you are killing Gentoo.  You wrote a demonstrably error prone
GLEP 39, then tried to exploit it to ram through GLEP 55, and you got
caught. You've created a huge amount of red tape, needless bickering
argument, and have utterly hamstrung every council ever convened. 
Ciaran, you will not be doing this again.

So there is now a moral question, do I have the right to oppose Ciaran,
Paludis, and everything he does?  Certainly I do, especially since he
has created many, myriad, and manifest arguments in the community
(amazingly we're having one now, and I was drug into it).  Do I have the
right to voice this opinion?  Certainly I do.  Is the opinion correct? 
In my eyes yes.

Note though the second sentence, as it is incredibly important.  Ciaran
insists on continuing to create red tape for Gentoo, it has created a
recent and MAJOR incident in a council meeting which has created bent
feelings, and totally hijacked the initiative of the council.  Until
this behavior stops I will oppose it publicly and loudly.

I would also point you to the recent council vote, wherein dev-zero was
ousted (see the major incident) and peper, who I think is a nice, sane
guy in my dealings ended up dead last.  This is of course because of his
relationship with you Ciaran.

Ciaran, you are perhaps the least politically capable person I've ever
met.  It is not possible for you to holdiin your head at the same time
two divergent ideas.  Your idea of pluralism is that everyone does
things your way.  Then when that doesn't happen you throw a temper
tantrum.  You sir, are killing Gentoo for these and many other reasons,
and I demand that you stop, I will also unilaterally oppose you until
you do.

Andrew D Kirch
Funtoo.org


PS: Ciaran, Thank you for comparing me to Rush Limbaugh, I consider it a
compliment.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Alec Warner]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 7:50 PM, Andrew D Kirch<trelane@trelane.net> wrote:
> Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> < trelane> ciaranm: I want Paludis to fail. It's unhealthy (or at least
>> the loudest and most visible of it's devs are) for Gentoo.
>>
>> < trelane> lets be VERY clear on that point. So long as Paludis, and
>> the culture it creates are unhealthy for Gentoo I want it to fail.
>>
>> < trelane> ciaranm: that's put in a manner that seems to be a somewhat
>> knee-jerk reaction. It should be clear that opposing you and everything
>> you do was an initiative I started only after careful consideration.
>>
>>

I think to preface I will state that Gentoo now is not the Gentoo of
yore and will likely never be again.  That is part of the reason why I
left (too big, too rudderless).  I hope the new council can find a
rudder.  That being said the comments below are mine alone.

>
> Ciaran, you are killing Gentoo.  You wrote a demonstrably error prone
> GLEP 39, then tried to exploit it to ram through GLEP 55, and you got
> caught. You've created a huge amount of red tape, needless bickering
> argument, and have utterly hamstrung every council ever convened.
> Ciaran, you will not be doing this again.

I somehow doubt Ciaran agrees with you view; nor a number of other
folks.  It makes it look like you comments are a bit accusatory as if
he is conspiring to destroy Gentoo; and I don't think that is the
truth of things.
One man wars are not really easy to fight; and you will not win many
friends (and plenty of enemies.)

That being said Gentoo is what people make of it; I don't think there
is a "Single Gentoo Vision" and there has not been one for years; so
it is difficult to see how Ciaran is bringing down anything.  If you
think his ideas are crap then I suggest locating the people who are
using them and talk to them about it.  Certainly some people think
they are good ideas (otherwise why are they being adopted?).

>
> So there is now a moral question, do I have the right to oppose Ciaran,
> Paludis, and everything he does?  Certainly I do, especially since he
> has created many, myriad, and manifest arguments in the community
> (amazingly we're having one now, and I was drug into it).  Do I have the
> right to voice this opinion?  Certainly I do.  Is the opinion correct?
> In my eyes yes.

A moral question?  Is this some kind of crusade?  You have the right
to do whatever you want; but you can keep your personal crusade
against Ciaran *offlist*, just like all the other personal jibs and
statements.

>
> Note though the second sentence, as it is incredibly important.  Ciaran
> insists on continuing to create red tape for Gentoo, it has created a
> recent and MAJOR incident in a council meeting which has created bent
> feelings, and totally hijacked the initiative of the council.  Until
> this behavior stops I will oppose it publicly and loudly.

To be blunt; the devs picked a poor council then; I hope the new
council does better in this area too.  It seems to me that if everyone
agreed with you that Ciaran was useless and his ideas sucked then he
wouldn't get the council's ear.  However I believe the opposite is
true; developers and teams report specific problems; he goes off to
solve them and then brings them to the council.  His ideas are
actually useful (not all of them, but some) and thus the council is
willing to listen.

The council should be completely under its own control.  Step 1 of
running an effective meeting is not letting the attendees run the
meeting over you (and I've seen it happen in real life meetings and it
is hilarious; but I feel bad for the guy running the meeting all the
same.)  That involves telling Ciaran to STFU if they are spending too
much time on his stuff (as anyone who is presenting at meetings.)

>
> I would also point you to the recent council vote, wherein dev-zero was
> ousted (see the major incident) and peper, who I think is a nice, sane
> guy in my dealings ended up dead last.  This is of course because of his
> relationship with you Ciaran.

Of course, you know how everyone voted and why; thus we can easily
deduce that everyone hates Ciaran, Exherbo, and Peper!  I think  its
your opinion that Peper lost due to this association (and I would
hesitate to call it "obvious".)

>
> Ciaran, you are perhaps the least politically capable person I've ever
> met.  It is not possible for you to holdiin your head at the same time
> two divergent ideas.  Your idea of pluralism is that everyone does
> things your way.  Then when that doesn't happen you throw a temper
> tantrum.  You sir, are killing Gentoo for these and many other reasons,
> and I demand that you stop, I will also unilaterally oppose you until
> you do.

The fact that you make this a black and white case is why I doubt your
reasonable stance on the issues.  I don't think unilaterally opposing
anyone puts you on moral high ground.  What if Ciaran actually has a
good idea; will you oppose it just because it is Ciaran?  You know
what I called upstreams who ignored patches from me because I was a
Gentoo developer?  I call them idiots.  Please don't fall into the
same boat (and don't shoot Gentoo in the foot by ignoring a source of
progress.)

>
> Andrew D Kirch
> Funtoo.org
>
>
> PS: Ciaran, Thank you for comparing me to Rush Limbaugh, I consider it a
> compliment.
>
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Ferris McCormick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1708 bytes --]

On Thu, 2009-07-09 at 22:50 -0400, Andrew D Kirch wrote:
> Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> > < trelane> ciaranm: I want Paludis to fail. It's unhealthy (or at least
> > the loudest and most visible of it's devs are) for Gentoo.
> >
> > < trelane> lets be VERY clear on that point. So long as Paludis, and
> > the culture it creates are unhealthy for Gentoo I want it to fail.
> >
> > < trelane> ciaranm: that's put in a manner that seems to be a somewhat
> > knee-jerk reaction. It should be clear that opposing you and everything
> > you do was an initiative I started only after careful consideration.
> >
> >   
> 
> Ciaran, you are killing Gentoo.  You wrote a demonstrably error prone
> GLEP 39, then tried to exploit it to ram through GLEP 55, and you got
> caught. You've created a huge amount of red tape, needless bickering
> argument, and have utterly hamstrung every council ever convened. 
> Ciaran, you will not be doing this again.
> 
Actually, GLEP39 was written by Grant and Ciaran, and it was voted on by
the entire developer community (I don't recall in which order these
happened, but certainly it was not Ciaran who approved it).

--- snip ---

I am wearing my userrel hat here.  I don't see anything here that
contributes to the discussion --- it looks like a personal attack and a
threat to me.  As Jorge stated a day or so ago, please stop this now.
You may consider this to be a final warning.

> 
> Andrew D Kirch
> Funtoo.org
> 
> 
> PS: Ciaran, Thank you for comparing me to Rush Limbaugh, I consider it a
> compliment.

Regards,
Ferris

-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

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[gentoo-dev] Guys: take it to -project

[Steven J Long]

I'm not answering the the points in here, much as I would like to. My bad, I
forgot that dev ML sets followup-to, stripping w/e the author puts on
there. My mail was set to followup-to project.

There's nothing stopping anyone else posting to project either, if they
believe they're not discussing ebuild development, but rather process.

When I get a moment, perhaps I will reply to ciaran's mail there. Meantime,
I think this one got missed in the hurly-burly, since it doesn't show on
gmane, only archives:
http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/msg_6c82019575749b628de20de060149782.xml

Again: please follow up to project, NOT here. Apologies for my oversight.

-- 
#friendly-coders -- We're friendly but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: A Little Council Reform Anyone?

[Donnie Berkholz]

On 12:51 Fri 10 Jul     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-07-09 at 22:50 -0400, Andrew D Kirch wrote:
> > Ciaran, you are killing Gentoo.  You wrote a demonstrably error 
> > prone GLEP 39, then tried to exploit it to ram through GLEP 55, and 
> > you got caught. You've created a huge amount of red tape, needless 
> > bickering argument, and have utterly hamstrung every council ever 
> > convened. Ciaran, you will not be doing this again.
> > 
> Actually, GLEP39 was written by Grant and Ciaran, and it was voted on 
> by the entire developer community (I don't recall in which order these 
> happened, but certainly it was not Ciaran who approved it).
> 
> --- snip ---
> 
> I am wearing my userrel hat here.  I don't see anything here that
> contributes to the discussion --- it looks like a personal attack and a
> threat to me.  As Jorge stated a day or so ago, please stop this now.
> You may consider this to be a final warning.

This absolutely reeks to me of discriminatory treatment and nepotism. If 
only everyone were held to the same high standards, Gentoo would be a 
better place.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com