Re: [gentoo-dev] ML changes

[Josh Saddler <nightmorph@gentoo.org>]

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Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 08:13:53PM -0400, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
>> My thought is this: everyone should try and evaluate their own behaviour
>> on this list, and the method in which they treat others.  If each of us
>> actually thought about the effects of our attitudes, this discussion
>> might well be moot.
> In the June meeting, I repeated my opinion that _every_ member of the
> list (but esp.  the developers) should strive to hold themselves to
> FreeNode's Catalyst (http://freenode.net/catalysts.shtml) ideal.
> 
> This was related to the original goals of the CoC in the first place.
> The CoC lost sight of the aim to get Gentoo to function better.
> 
> Whatever the council has tried, it seems that general history is being
> repeated in microcosm with Gentoo: You cannot enforce morality nor
> ethics.
> 
> At the same time, you cannot remove any that disrupt the community.
> This includes both 
> - Forcibly: There are plenty that believe dropping Mr McCreesh and Mr
>   Long would improve the perceived health of the list. The opponents of
>   such call this censorship.
> - and 'not feeding the trolls' because as long as they have an interest
>   in Gentoo itself, they will remain (for the same reason that
>   developers stay).

Good points from both Robin and Seemant, and I'm glad Robin brought up
the fact that there are other trolls on the list, though more crude and
less sophisticated in their approach. As we've seen, there are long-term
and short-term folks on the list who have some interest in their heads,
and that will also disrupt the community, regardless of whether forcible
action is taken.

> Thus the council (both the present one, as well as the incoming council)
> stand between a rock and a very hard place. They stand charged with
> improving the perception of Gentoo, improving communication on the lists
> AND not alienating any part of the community.

Alienation might happen regardless. It may not be a bad thing either;
neither good nor bad, simply something that happens. There are
polarizing issues plain and simple -- multiple package managers, PMS,
creating the CoC and similar, anything from the last year. If you try to
placate everyone, no one will end up happy and things grind to a halt.

> Compare it to now, and I read things like bug #184597, and I am ashamed
> to see that 3 teams rebuffed a potential new developer. That degree of
> elitism just hurts. I understand Gentoo has always been a meritocracy,
> but it is an open one, that lets folk get started regardless.

I think the charge of "elitism" is neither fair nor accurate. It seems
like simple smart decision-making: the teams have never had any prior
experience with that developer, despite his request in the bug to join
them. They haven't seen his technical skills. I know we wouldn't let
anyone in the GDP unless we'd seen a history of valuable contributions
and the candidate displayed considerable familiarity with GuideXML. It's
not applying some arbitrary elitism; it's maintaining technical
standards so that stuff doesn't break.

> How do we get Gentoo back to where it was? That I cannot answer. 

"Where it was" must be defined first. Where it was a year ago? Where it
was when there were fewer people? The further back in time you go, the
smaller the pool of users, developers, packages, and available tools &
technology. As more people showed up, more friction occurred. From what
I've seen there's always some constant level of friction, however low it
may ebb from time to time.

I remember that within the last few months there have been a few
low-level scattered queries about "how would it work" if some group of
developers forked. The primary sentiment behind such an occurence would
be to create a better (and smaller) community of developers and some
kind of different structure that allows for proper self-policing. This
sounds like what Gentoo may have been like when it was still relatively
new -- if Gentoo was ever manageable, that is. Is a fork the solution to
what you want? Who knows.


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