Re: [gentoo-project] Council nominations

[William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org>]

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Fellow developers,

the following is my manifesto for this council election.

My background:

I have been a gentoo developer since 2004, and a user since approximately
2001. I also have some experience with RedHat Linux and Debian in the
earlier days of these distributions (Debian 3.0 and RH 6.0). I have also
worked on and continue to work on the Speakup screen reader driver in
the linux kernel.

My thoughts for the 2013-14 council term:

These are basically the same ideas I have followed during my last term
on the council.

1. The council should stay out of the way of innovation, which comes
from the individual developers.

2. Developers also have a responsibility to maintain packages in a way
that is in line with the gentoo philosophy, which includes things like
following upstream recommendations unless we have a technical reason not
to, making sure patches we do apply can be sent upstream (or
documenting why we need them), and giving users reasonable control over
packages.

3. When the council is asked to make a decision, there are several
things it should consider.

- The council should make sure it understands the issues involved
before voting.

  - The council should not take an extremely long time to make a
	decision. We are not going to be able to please everyone in Gentoo
	all the time, and we are not going to be able to please everyone on
	the council.

- the council should consider how much extra work it puts on developers
and how much its decisions will cause Gentoo to diverge from upstream
recommendations. I feel that the council should exercise caution when
asking developers to do custom work which diverges from upstream
recommendations.

4. I believe we can learn from the past, and improve upon it. Continuing
to do things like we have in the past is not a bad thing in itself.
However, using what we have done in the past to block change can be a
bad thing. I understand that people are used to doing things a certain
way. However, that alone is not justification for continuing to do things
the same way in the future.
if we need to make a change, we should make sure that
change is backward compatible with what we have, or if this is not
possible, provide the smoothest possible route forward for our users.

If anyone has any questions for me about any of these points, feel free
to ask.

William


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