Re: [gentoo-dev] Policy regarding the inactive members

[Matti Bickel <mabi@gentoo.org>]

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Zeerak Mustafa Waseem wrote:
> But isn't it the councils purpose to lead gentoo?

It's my understanding that council gets elected to lead gentoo as a
whole. But in the end the one doing the work gets to decide what's going
on (as long as it's intra-project; the only thing i remember where
council got to vote on a "project" outcome is PMS/EAPI)

Don't get me wrong: several times i hoped for somebody with authority to
magically end discussions on an issue, handing out the right direction
and be done with it (you already mentioned python-3).
But in a "consensus" community like gentoo we will instantly have
discussions about "our" definition of "right direction". Only a select
few still have that authority required to end a sub-thread with their
"right direction". And this is mostly because they post hard facts you
are buying because they've done so for years and otherwise kept their
mouth shut.

But i disgress..

> By leading they have to either delegate to someone to supervise
> Gentoo projects or do it themselves.

No. It just doesn't work that way. GLEP39 says projects may have a
leader, who will hopefully be responsible to the projects members.

That's the person you want to turn to. Older projects may still have a
"operation" lead and a "strategic" lead. In that case, you want the
"strategic" lead :)

The whole wording and history of the GLEP gives projects most of the
power. They can't be blocked by the community, they can conflict, they
can go defunct at any time. All these are explicitly spelled out in the
GLEP.

> I do agree
> that doing something yourself will always be the first step, but
> there is no way every developer can keep track of everything that's
> going on.

They are not required to. I'm not required to know of the wiki project
or the huge issue that python3 going stable seems to be. My
responsibility as a dev is to keep up with things I work on, like EAPI
changes. If I *want* others to notice, I'll contact council (if I need a
decision) or PR (if I have an announcement).

You are proposing a centralized solution. This hasn't worked since
Daniel left and I personally think gentoo's too large to successfully
try it again.

> I utterly fail to see why there should be any rock throwing.

Me too. But it happens. Despite a dozen folks calling for calm again and
again. I don't want to offer explanations for it, this mail has gotten
long enough as it is ;)


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