On Sat, Jul 13, 2019 at 06:17:48AM -0700, Raymond Jennings wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 13, 2019 at 5:12 AM Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > Team,
> >
> > This is a meta topic to collect Questions For Gentoo Foundation Trustee
> > Candidates together.
> > The idea seemed to work well on -project for council candidates.
> >
> > Reply to this post with new questions only. The resulting sub topics will
> > help keep responses and resulting discussion organised.
> > Accordingly, I will respond to this post with my question.
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> >
> > Roy Bamford
> > (Neddyseagoon) a member of
> > elections
> > gentoo-ops
> > forum-mods
> > arm64
> 
> 
> Dear candidates
> 
> What are your plans regarding future relations between the trustees and the
> council?  I noted that the council isn't even mentioned in the bylaws

While I am not up for election this year, I find it important to discuss the
proper organization of Gentoo while disregarding the dissolution discussions.

This is important to me because I believe the dissolution into a newly formed
501c3 with a retained CPA is the most viable, responsible, and ensures Gentoo's
legal governance by the membership (i.e. those devs, and general members) is
retained. An umbrella does not offer this.  Conversely, an umbrella requires
that we inform those interested in Gentoo and it's future to gain membership
with the umbrella organization in order to have a vote in the same matters we
currently deal with.

To answer your initial question and tread across the hot topic of council and
trustees...

This should not even be a debate. I initially ran for council before running as
a candidate in the trustee election. Many folks directly accused me trying to
run as a trustee because I was not elected for council. These accusations
explicitly stated that I was attempting to gain "power" a different way.  They
were very childish and ill-thought.

Each body serves a unique purpose.  The Gentoo Foundation serves as the legal
representation of Gentoo. This (for non-American's) simply means that they
own/defend the trademarks, monies, assets, and any legal matters brought against
the Foundation.

The council drives the distribution day-to-day from a technical perspective.

Overall, I am an advocate for appointing the council as the technical body of
Gentoo via the by-laws. If nothing more than just to formalize for the general
public that they are the technical body.

As stated in previous mails, some things *simply cannot be delegated* to
individuals who are not legally (I will not get into international laws here)
held liable by virtue of a general membership electing an individual to the
board of trustees.  This includes things such as COMREL, monies, assets,
trademarks, legal name requirements for contributions.

I, personally, have no intent on trying to circumvent or "override" the councils
decisions so long as they have no legal implications. We obviously saw the
council and trustees work together to pass the GLEP governing Git signed-off-by
lines.  Of course, this document has no legal signifance.  It was, of course, a
prudent thing to have done and has allowed the distribution to remain protected.

That decision should have been adopted into the by-laws first, with a governing
GLEP for the technical implementation done by the council. All of this, of
course, having been amicably decided by both the council and trustees. One
representing the legal interests of the distro and the other the technical
governance of the distribution.

*These situations are rare though and I would hope adults can work together to
achieve the appropriate outcome*

As stated above and told to those who questioned my intentions, I am simply here
to support Gentoo as a trustee. That means, I am an advocate for purchasing
hardware needed by teams, supporting the developers (e.g. Nitrokeys), and
keeping the infrastructure up that allows Gentoo to be successful around the
world.

*This to me is an example of how current and future Trustees should conduct
themselves*

If a Trustee wants to be involved in influencing the day-to-day or technical
decisions then we have well-established mechanisms for that and an elected
council to decide.

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron