Re: [gentoo-project] Merging Trustees and Council / Developers and Foundation - 1.0 reply

["Michał Górny" <mgorny@gentoo.org>]

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On Wed, 11 Jan 2017 10:06:24 -0600
Matthew Thode <prometheanfire@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 01/11/2017 08:46 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
> > Hi, all.
> > 
> > Since this is getting quite exhaustive, here's my point on the proposal
> > as it is hinted now, and a counter-proposal.
> > 
> > TL;DR:
> > 
> > 1. I do not mind encouraging more developers to join the Foundation, or
> > even making it opt-out. However, I do oppose discriminating developers
> > who decide not to join the Foundation.
> >   
> 
> How is it discriminating?  As you said below, another option is to have
> the unified voting pool but vote for two bodies.  However, in order to
> avoid repeating splitting the vote I think that opting out of voting for
> one should opt you out of voting for all.

That was just a general remark in case voting was tied to Foundation
membership.

> > 3. I don't think merging the Council and Trustees is a good idea.
> > The two projects have divergent goals and different qualities expected
> > from members.
> 
> I mostly agree, but more in the way that Trustees should oversee the
> distro as a whole, but delegate technical matters to the Council, who
> are better equipped to deal with them.  Non-technical matters would boil
> up to the Trustees.

That sounds like turning things upside down. Usually matters go from
down below to top. I see it like this:

  dev [< project] < Council < Trustees

In which case it is only reasonable that if devs/projects can't handle
an issue by themselves they refer it to the Council. In this case,
the Council is a body elected by developers to handle disputes between
them.

I don't really see a reason to put Trustees in between that. I'd rather
keep them as final step overseeing the Council, i.e. things to go
Trustees if there is a problem with Council. However, to avoid
the 'two-headed beast' problem, I'd say that the Trustees should only
intervene if legally required to do so, i.e. if the Council is really
doing their job badly and put Gentoo at risk of legal issues.

As for the other issues, I think I'll continue arguing once I see
the updated proposal. Thanks for all the explanations.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny
<http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/>

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