[gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Ulrich Mueller]

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In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.

Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
suggested one (since the last meeting).

The agenda for the meeting will be sent out on Sunday 2019-07-14.

Please reply to the gentoo-project list.

Ulrich

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Michał Górny]

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On Sun, 2019-07-07 at 21:30 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
> constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
> the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
> 
> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> suggested one (since the last meeting).
> 

I would like to request the Council to vote on GLEP 81 (user/group
packages) approval.  The main purpose of the GLEP is to provide
replacement for GLEP 27, and to set review policies.

Draft:
https://gentoo.org/glep/glep-0081.html

Mailing list reviews:
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/2ca74142fa1d160f7573303d88b185b4
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/a3e94f10441bba9800b93b7cc90ded97
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/92289b159fb07599cfc8a215ee5163b5

The reference implementation is already in ::gentoo (I need to update
this section of the GLEP, I'll do it soonish), and so far the only
complaints were about obligatory pre-commit review.

We also have a wiki page with current mapping/progress:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/UID_GID_Assignment

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Michał Górny]

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On Sun, 2019-07-07 at 21:30 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
> constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
> the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
> 
> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> suggested one (since the last meeting).
> 

My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
mailing list.

I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.

Notably:

1. People (including developers) workaround it via posting to -project. 
As a result, the correct split on topic of those two mailing lists is
disturbed.

2. The majority of 'blocked' -dev posters are helpful *users*.  We ought
not to put unnecessary obstacles because of few harmful entities.

3. Some processes, in particular ebuild, user/group addition review etc.
require posting to -dev.  This makes it unnecessarily painful to proxied
maintainers who need to request adding it.

4. In fact, I ended up as top committer to whitelist repo, and that's
because I've been adding proxied maintainers to it.  The sole fact that
so few people are being added shows that people resign from posting
rather than request being added.

All that considered, I don't that the whitelist approach works.  It
only:

a. discourages helpful people from posting,

b. adds unnecessary work on developers who have to update the list,

c. breaks list topic separation.

Therefore, I would like to request the Council to vote on removing
the whitelist and reopening the list to public posting.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Sun, 07 Jul 2019, Michał Górny wrote:

> My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> mailing list.

> I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
> believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.

The restriction was introduced because of the problems that you had
pointed out in [1]. What measures do you propose instead, in order to
address these problems?

Ulrich

[1] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/6e7cc13cd850be7dbd86376d3a197a16

Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Michał Górny]

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On Mon, 2019-07-08 at 06:43 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > On Sun, 07 Jul 2019, Michał Górny wrote:
> > My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> > mailing list.
> > I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
> > believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> > a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> > on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> > and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.
> 
> The restriction was introduced because of the problems that you had
> pointed out in [1]. What measures do you propose instead, in order to
> address these problems?

As for the attacks, I believe having active Proctors team is
the
solution.  After all, they provide more proactive approach
and better
response times than ComRel used to.

As for the off-topics, I don't think we really solved it.  After all:

a. some of the problematic traffic has shifted to -project or other
mailing lists,

b. frequently *developers* are the source of the problem.

The third problem mentioned is a minor one and I think we can live with
it.

I would also like to remind that the initial proposal made sense because
it restricted both -dev and -project, so the split between mailing lists
was preserved.  The decision to restrict one but not the other has
resulted in switching the split to 'devs only' and 'everyone', without
matching change of rules.

In the end, instead of following the rule '-dev for technical, -project
for not-strictly-technical', people are following the rule '-dev if you
don't want external input, -project if you want external input'.

I can admit mistakes.  Can you?


> [1] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/6e7cc13cd850be7dbd86376d3a197a16

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 1:36 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2019-07-08 at 06:43 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >
> > The restriction was introduced because of the problems that you had
> > pointed out in [1]. What measures do you propose instead, in order to
> > address these problems?
>
> As for the attacks, I believe having active Proctors team is
> the
> solution.  After all, they provide more proactive approach
> and better
> response times than ComRel used to.

This is certainly the intent.  The main weakness is that it can't
offer any solution for ban evasion, since mailing lists do not provide
any way to delete emails after they are sent.

Historically ban evasion hasn't been a problem, but then again we
haven't really had much in the way of bans.

Personally I think it probably makes more sense to wait until evasion
becomes a problem before we try to fix it, since there are significant
costs to whitelisting.

> I would also like to remind that the initial proposal made sense because
> it restricted both -dev and -project, so the split between mailing lists
> was preserved.  The decision to restrict one but not the other has
> resulted in switching the split to 'devs only' and 'everyone', without
> matching change of rules.

I think this particular problem is best solved by setting the same
policy on both lists.  Either whitelist both, using the same list, or
keep both open.

Overall I think the real tradeoff is decreased non-dev participation
vs the possibility of ban evasion, which is hypothetical, and more
Proctors activity which generates controversy.

A smaller issue is just low-grade trolling that keeps leaking through
because Proctors don't want to jump on every little thing and people
react strongly when they do anything at all...

> I can admit mistakes.  Can you?

...and clearly whitelisting can't fix that issue entirely.

As you pointed out recently elsewhere, just be direct with your
concerns.  ulm's response was completely predictable, and it was a
reasonable question to ask simply so that it gets discussed a bit.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Mon, 08 Jul 2019, Rich Freeman wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 1:36 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> I can admit mistakes.  Can you?

> ...and clearly whitelisting can't fix that issue entirely.

> As you pointed out recently elsewhere, just be direct with your
> concerns.  ulm's response was completely predictable, and it was a
> reasonable question to ask simply so that it gets discussed a bit.

To clarify, I'm not necessarily opposed to reverting that Council
decision. I brought this up, because I think that before reverting,
we should have good understanding of the reasons why it was introduced
back then [1].

Ulrich

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence>

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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Am Montag, 8. Juli 2019, 07:36:03 CEST schrieb Michał Górny:
> On Mon, 2019-07-08 at 06:43 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > > On Sun, 07 Jul 2019, Michał Górny wrote:
> > > My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> > > mailing list.
> 
> As for the attacks, I believe having active Proctors team is
> the
> solution.  After all, they provide more proactive approach
> and better
> response times than ComRel used to.

^ This. (That was the precise intention behind re-forming proctors.)
So now that we have the proctors we can give things a try again.
Attacks and hostile environment were the most critical part.

> As for the off-topics, I don't think we really solved it.  After all:
> 
> a. some of the problematic traffic has shifted to -project or other
> mailing lists,
> b. frequently *developers* are the source of the problem.

Shrug. Off-topic is not so critical. ["Mark all read."] Also, if we manage to 
keep the -dev list at least "off-topic but technical", that's nearly "on-
topic" again.

> The third problem mentioned is a minor one and I think we can live with
> it.

If a "support request" is technically challenging and interesting, why not. 
After all, we might learn something from it and improve Gentoo as a result. 
Also, it *is* interesting to learn what people are using Gentoo for. So this 
is something I can live with too.

> I would also like to remind that the initial proposal made sense because
> it restricted both -dev and -project, so the split between mailing lists
> was preserved.  The decision to restrict one but not the other has
> resulted in switching the split to 'devs only' and 'everyone', without
> matching change of rules.

Yes, and that specific decision was rather idi^H^H^H... never mind.
It was a horrible meeting.

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer
(council, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Andrew Savchenko]

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On Fri, 12 Jul 2019 21:56:28 +0200 Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> Am Montag, 8. Juli 2019, 07:36:03 CEST schrieb Michał Górny:
> > On Mon, 2019-07-08 at 06:43 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Sun, 07 Jul 2019, Michał Górny wrote:
> > > > My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> > > > mailing list.
> > 
> > As for the attacks, I believe having active Proctors team is
> > the
> > solution.  After all, they provide more proactive approach
> > and better
> > response times than ComRel used to.
> 
> ^ This. (That was the precise intention behind re-forming proctors.)
> So now that we have the proctors we can give things a try again.
> Attacks and hostile environment were the most critical part.

It is nice to have the Proctors team up and running. But how they
can help with the active ban evasion problem? Ban someone, they
will create a new e-mail, ban it after an inappropriate post and
the cycle will repeat itself. This will go for eternity or until
someone will get tired, but anyway the Gentoo will be hurt as an
ultimate result of such affair.

If I recall things correctly, the ban evasion was the main reason
which lead us to the whitelisting and no other solution was
proposed since (and I really doubt it exists).

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Lars Wendler]

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Hi,

On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:

>On Sun, 2019-07-07 at 21:30 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
>> constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
>> the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
>> 
>> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
>> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
>> suggested one (since the last meeting).
>> 
>
>My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
>mailing list.
>
>I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
>believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
>a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
>on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
>and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.
>
>Notably:
>
>1. People (including developers) workaround it via posting to
>-project. As a result, the correct split on topic of those two mailing
>lists is disturbed.
>
>2. The majority of 'blocked' -dev posters are helpful *users*.  We
>ought not to put unnecessary obstacles because of few harmful entities.
>
>3. Some processes, in particular ebuild, user/group addition review
>etc. require posting to -dev.  This makes it unnecessarily painful to
>proxied maintainers who need to request adding it.
>
>4. In fact, I ended up as top committer to whitelist repo, and that's
>because I've been adding proxied maintainers to it.  The sole fact that
>so few people are being added shows that people resign from posting
>rather than request being added.
>
>All that considered, I don't that the whitelist approach works.  It
>only:
>
>a. discourages helpful people from posting,
>
>b. adds unnecessary work on developers who have to update the list,
>
>c. breaks list topic separation.
>
>Therefore, I would like to request the Council to vote on removing
>the whitelist and reopening the list to public posting.
>

I fully support this request.
This was the utter worst decision being done by council I've ever had
the misfortune to be a witness of and I hope our new council will try
to never top this kind of bad decisions.

Cheers
-- 
Lars Wendler
Gentoo package maintainer
GPG: 21CC CF02 4586 0A07 ED93  9F68 498F E765 960E 9B39

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[William Hubbs]

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On Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 11:28:50AM +0200, Lars Wendler wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> 

*snip*

> >My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> >mailing list.
> >
> >I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
> >believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> >a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> >on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> >and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.

*snip*

> I fully support this request.
> This was the utter worst decision being done by council I've ever had
> the misfortune to be a witness of and I hope our new council will try
> to never top this kind of bad decisions.

I was on the council that made this decision as well, and I feel that it
should never have passed because it comes dangerously close to violating
our social contract. Some disagree because everything is still read
only, but I'm still not comfortable with it.

From my POV, there is not really anything to discuss. The post
restriction should be removed immediately.

William

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Michael Everitt]

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On 10/07/19 14:55, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 11:28:50AM +0200, Lars Wendler wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
>>
> *snip*
>
>>> My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
>>> mailing list.
>>>
>>> I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
>>> believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
>>> a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
>>> on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
>>> and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.
> *snip*
>
>> I fully support this request.
>> This was the utter worst decision being done by council I've ever had
>> the misfortune to be a witness of and I hope our new council will try
>> to never top this kind of bad decisions.
> I was on the council that made this decision as well, and I feel that it
> should never have passed because it comes dangerously close to violating
> our social contract. Some disagree because everything is still read
> only, but I'm still not comfortable with it.
>
> From my POV, there is not really anything to discuss. The post
> restriction should be removed immediately.
>
> William
It remains by dint of procedure that the matter should be brought to a
meeting (or failing that, a bug, as a pseudo-meeting) and that an agreement
is noted that this is the way forward, so that Infra can enact the revision
in configuration, with the appropriate authority.

Whilst it would be an interesting option to do "vote by mailing list" I
think the road ahead could be much more rocky than it already is ..


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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[William Hubbs]

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On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 03:07:21PM +0100, Michael Everitt wrote:
> On 10/07/19 14:55, William Hubbs wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 11:28:50AM +0200, Lars Wendler wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> >>
> > *snip*
> >
> >>> My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> >>> mailing list.
> >>>
> >>> I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
> >>> believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> >>> a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> >>> on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> >>> and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.
> > *snip*
> >
> >> I fully support this request.
> >> This was the utter worst decision being done by council I've ever had
> >> the misfortune to be a witness of and I hope our new council will try
> >> to never top this kind of bad decisions.
> > I was on the council that made this decision as well, and I feel that it
> > should never have passed because it comes dangerously close to violating
> > our social contract. Some disagree because everything is still read
> > only, but I'm still not comfortable with it.
> >
> > From my POV, there is not really anything to discuss. The post
> > restriction should be removed immediately.
> >
> > William
> It remains by dint of procedure that the matter should be brought to a
> meeting (or failing that, a bug, as a pseudo-meeting) and that an agreement
> is noted that this is the way forward, so that Infra can enact the revision
> in configuration, with the appropriate authority.
> 
> Whilst it would be an interesting option to do "vote by mailing list" I
> think the road ahead could be much more rocky than it already is ..

I didn't mean to imply that we should disregard procedures, I was just
stating a strong opinion about the decision. It should be reversed as
fast as is reasonably possible.

William


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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Andrew Savchenko]

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On Wed, 10 Jul 2019 08:55:34 -0500 William Hubbs wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 09, 2019 at 11:28:50AM +0200, Lars Wendler wrote:
[...]
> > I fully support this request.
> > This was the utter worst decision being done by council I've ever had
> > the misfortune to be a witness of and I hope our new council will try
> > to never top this kind of bad decisions.
> 
> I was on the council that made this decision as well, and I feel that it
> should never have passed because it comes dangerously close to violating
> our social contract. Some disagree because everything is still read
> only, but I'm still not comfortable with it.

It is not closer that our tree git repo actually. Everyone can read
it, but only few can commit plus there are ways for indirect
contributions like pull requests or proxy maintenance. So I see no
problem here from the Social contract standpoint.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Andrew Savchenko]

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Hi all!

On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> On Sun, 2019-07-07 at 21:30 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
> > constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
> > the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
> > 
> > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> > suggested one (since the last meeting).
> > 
> 
> My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> mailing list.
> 
> I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
> believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.

We had the problem of the lists becoming unusable. Since person
involved actively avoided bans, the only working technical mean
available was to whitelist the gentoo-dev mail list. Other
technical means like targeted banning apparently have had failed.

Social means were also ineffective as someone usually supported a
flame by replying to provocative posts due to one reason or another.

So the only reliable solution was to whitelist. Is this solution
good? No, it isn't. But when choosing between bad and worst, bad
solution is preferable. I'm grateful to the council of that term
for having guts to take responsibility and make uneasy, arguable
but necessary decision.

> Notably:
> 
> 1. People (including developers) workaround it via posting to -project. 
> As a result, the correct split on topic of those two mailing lists is
> disturbed.

This had happened before the whitelisting and will happen even if
it will be lifted.

> 2. The majority of 'blocked' -dev posters are helpful *users*.  We ought
> not to put unnecessary obstacles because of few harmful entities.

1. All proxied maintainers were whitelisted automatically.

2. Everyone willing to participate in the discussion is free to
contact any dev and be whitelisted if a dev will vouch for them.
I whitelisted some people myself per requests.

> 3. Some processes, in particular ebuild, user/group addition review etc.
> require posting to -dev.  This makes it unnecessarily painful to proxied
> maintainers who need to request adding it.

All proxied maintainers were whitelisted and the time when
whitelisting was activated. It is the responsibility of their peers
to whitelist any new proxied maintainers. Probably the proxy
maintainers team can manage this on a regular scheme.
 
> 4. In fact, I ended up as top committer to whitelist repo, and that's
> because I've been adding proxied maintainers to it.  The sole fact that
> so few people are being added shows that people resign from posting
> rather than request being added.

Yes, this is a drawback of current solution, but we have nothing
better available. And as a side effect we now know the most
tenacious contributors. 

> All that considered, I don't that the whitelist approach works.  It
> only:
> 
> a. discourages helpful people from posting,

But without whitelisting much more people will be discouraged from
posting. And not just posting. The way the gentoo-dev list was just
before the whitelisting, it discouraged existing people from
contributions and discouraged many potential contributors due to
highly toxic and unproductive atmosphere.

> b. adds unnecessary work on developers who have to update the list,

It's not that much of a work. For proxied maintainer the
appropriate team may engage some scripting for this task.

> c. breaks list topic separation.

This problem exists, but within a tolerance level and it was
present even before the whitelisting, so it will exist even if the
whitelisting will be removed, since this is a multifactor issue.

> Therefore, I would like to request the Council to vote on removing
> the whitelist and reopening the list to public posting.
 
And I kindly ask the Council to review all pros and cons before
changing the current state.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Raymond Jennings]

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On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 4:48 PM Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> > On Sun, 2019-07-07 at 21:30 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
> > > constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
> > > the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
> > >
> > > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> > > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> > > suggested one (since the last meeting).
> > >
> >
> > My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> > mailing list.
> >
> > I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
> > believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> > a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> > on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> > and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.
>
> We had the problem of the lists becoming unusable. Since person
> involved actively avoided bans, the only working technical mean
> available was to whitelist the gentoo-dev mail list. Other
> technical means like targeted banning apparently have had failed.
>

Deliberate evasion of a ban is a serious infraction of the CoC in my
opinion because it's tantamount to trespassing and harassment.

Are there any stronger measures that can be taken against people who defy
bans?  For example, on irc, evading a channel ban or an ignore is often a
violation of the hosting irc network's AUP and can result in escalations to
network level bans, which from my observation are aggressively enforced.
In such situations I've observed that the ops of the channel in question
wind up getting the miscreant out of their hair once they escalate to
network authorities, and for the offender in question the channel ban
becomes the least of their worries once they start racking up points on
their network rap sheet.

Social means were also ineffective as someone usually supported a
> flame by replying to provocative posts due to one reason or another.
>
> So the only reliable solution was to whitelist. Is this solution
> good? No, it isn't. But when choosing between bad and worst, bad
> solution is preferable. I'm grateful to the council of that term
> for having guts to take responsibility and make uneasy, arguable
> but necessary decision.
>

I would prefer to minimize collateral damage.

>
> > Notably:
> >
> > 1. People (including developers) workaround it via posting to -project.
> > As a result, the correct split on topic of those two mailing lists is
> > disturbed.
>
> This had happened before the whitelisting and will happen even if
> it will be lifted.
>
> > 2. The majority of 'blocked' -dev posters are helpful *users*.  We ought
> > not to put unnecessary obstacles because of few harmful entities.
>
> 1. All proxied maintainers were whitelisted automatically.
>
> 2. Everyone willing to participate in the discussion is free to
> contact any dev and be whitelisted if a dev will vouch for them.
> I whitelisted some people myself per requests.
>
> > 3. Some processes, in particular ebuild, user/group addition review etc.
> > require posting to -dev.  This makes it unnecessarily painful to proxied
> > maintainers who need to request adding it.
>
> All proxied maintainers were whitelisted and the time when
> whitelisting was activated. It is the responsibility of their peers
> to whitelist any new proxied maintainers. Probably the proxy
> maintainers team can manage this on a regular scheme.
>
> > 4. In fact, I ended up as top committer to whitelist repo, and that's
> > because I've been adding proxied maintainers to it.  The sole fact that
> > so few people are being added shows that people resign from posting
> > rather than request being added.
>
> Yes, this is a drawback of current solution, but we have nothing
> better available. And as a side effect we now know the most
> tenacious contributors.
>
> > All that considered, I don't that the whitelist approach works.  It
> > only:
> >
> > a. discourages helpful people from posting,
>
> But without whitelisting much more people will be discouraged from
> posting. And not just posting. The way the gentoo-dev list was just
> before the whitelisting, it discouraged existing people from
> contributions and discouraged many potential contributors due to
> highly toxic and unproductive atmosphere.
>
> > b. adds unnecessary work on developers who have to update the list,
>
> It's not that much of a work. For proxied maintainer the
> appropriate team may engage some scripting for this task.
>
> > c. breaks list topic separation.
>
> This problem exists, but within a tolerance level and it was
> present even before the whitelisting, so it will exist even if the
> whitelisting will be removed, since this is a multifactor issue.
>
> > Therefore, I would like to request the Council to vote on removing
> > the whitelist and reopening the list to public posting.
>
> And I kindly ask the Council to review all pros and cons before
> changing the current state.
>
> Best regards,
> Andrew Savchenko
>

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Michał Górny]

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On Sun, 2019-07-21 at 02:48 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> > My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> > mailing list.
> > 
> > I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
> > believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> > a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> > on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> > and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.
> 
> We had the problem of the lists becoming unusable. Since person
> involved actively avoided bans, the only working technical mean
> available was to whitelist the gentoo-dev mail list. Other
> technical means like targeted banning apparently have had failed.

For the record, this is oversimplfying.  The main reason why the person
in question has bypassed the ban is because ComRel failed to deliver
a professional notice about the ban, and therefore provoked him to
publish it.  Not saying it's justified or appropriate, saying it might
not have happened if we did things right.

I'm not aware of any case of deliberate repeated ban evasions that
required explicit action in the past.  Are you?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Andrew Savchenko]

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On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 08:28:39 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> On Sun, 2019-07-21 at 02:48 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> > On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> > > My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from gentoo-dev
> > > mailing list.
> > > 
> > > I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective I
> > > believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> > > a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> > > on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> > > and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.
> > 
> > We had the problem of the lists becoming unusable. Since person
> > involved actively avoided bans, the only working technical mean
> > available was to whitelist the gentoo-dev mail list. Other
> > technical means like targeted banning apparently have had failed.
> 
> For the record, this is oversimplfying.  The main reason why the person
> in question has bypassed the ban is because ComRel failed to deliver
> a professional notice about the ban, and therefore provoked him to
> publish it.  Not saying it's justified or appropriate, saying it might
> not have happened if we did things right.
> 
> I'm not aware of any case of deliberate repeated ban evasions that
> required explicit action in the past.  Are you?

The person in question was banned many times and each time
registered new e-mail and continued a flame. This is what is called
the ban evasion and the only practical way to stop this is the
white list.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Raymond Jennings]

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On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 4:26 AM Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 08:28:39 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> > On Sun, 2019-07-21 at 02:48 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> > > On Sun, 07 Jul 2019 23:00:01 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
> > > > My second agenda item is: removing posting restrictions from
> gentoo-dev
> > > > mailing list.
> > > >
> > > > I was on the Council that made those changes, and from retrospective
> I
> > > > believe the decision to be a mistake.  It was made to workaround
> > > > a problem with inefficiency of ComRel, and we should have focused
> > > > on fixing ComRel instead.  I don't believe it serves its purpose well
> > > > and IMO it causes more problems than it solves.
> > >
> > > We had the problem of the lists becoming unusable. Since person
> > > involved actively avoided bans, the only working technical mean
> > > available was to whitelist the gentoo-dev mail list. Other
> > > technical means like targeted banning apparently have had failed.
> >
> > For the record, this is oversimplfying.  The main reason why the person
> > in question has bypassed the ban is because ComRel failed to deliver
> > a professional notice about the ban, and therefore provoked him to
> > publish it.  Not saying it's justified or appropriate, saying it might
> > not have happened if we did things right.
> >
> > I'm not aware of any case of deliberate repeated ban evasions that
> > required explicit action in the past.  Are you?
>
> The person in question was banned many times and each time
> registered new e-mail and continued a flame. This is what is called
> the ban evasion and the only practical way to stop this is the
> white list.
>

This is also a case in point for the principle I was advancing.  If true,
said person was blatantly trespassing on a list he knew damn well he was
not welcome to post on, and just by breaching the ban he committed an
offense completely separate from the one that got him banned in the first
place.

In the real world, this would be akin to violating a restraining order,
which in my state is a crime you get put in jail for, and in aggravated
cases it is even a felony.

Bringing that example back to the context of the mailing list, are there
stronger measures that can be taken besides just banning him or
whitelisting the list (which causes collateral inconvenience to innocent
bystanders)?

Some say that the best defense is a good offense, and in my opinion,
stronger measures that can target and punish the trespasser directly and
that avoid collateral inconveniences to innocent bystanders would be better.

My opinion is that the consequences should escalate somehow, not unlike how
in the real world, blatantly defying a consequence is punishable with an
escalation to more serious consequences, and this principle applies in more
contexts than criminal justice.

For one example, breaking the rules in a bar will get the bouncer tossing
you out and banning you.  Going back however will get the police summoned
to arrest you for trespassing.  After that, you getting banned from the bar
is going to be the least of your worries, because now you have a rap sheet.

The bouncer isn't going to just keep repeatedly throwing you out.  You get
thrown out ONCE, after that the bouncer is justified in escalating.  On the
side, once the police show up the situation changes, and you WILL be
leaving the bar whether you like it or not, and point of fact if you even
fight the situation things will escalate even further.  If the police have
to remove you from the bar by force you will be charged with trespassing,
and you may also get an added charge of resisting arrest.  Outright
fighting the police will get you tased and then charged with assaulting an
officer which is a felony.  The point being that, at every point, defying
consequences results in escalations that bring more severe consequences.

For another example, if you get suspended without pay by your boss at work
because you did something wrong, you serve the suspension and either go
through proper channels to appeal or leave well enough alone.  If you defy
your suspension and clock in anyway you're probably going to get a big fat
pink slip for insubordination because at that point you deliberately
disobeyed a direct order.

I think that the trespassing on a list that he's been banned from should be
itself treated as a serious offense, and a separate offense from the one
that he was originally banned for, and I would hope that there's likewise
ways to escalate against mailing list ban evasion in ways that don't cause
collateral inconvenience for other users of that list.


> Best regards,
> Andrew Savchenko
>

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 7/21/19 7:25 AM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> 
> This is what is called the ban evasion and the only practical way to
> stop this is the white list.

You could promise to ban any Gentoo developers that respond to him =)

There are other technical options available, too, depending on how
annoyed/motivated you are. In any case, that guy's gone, and this is now
a solution in search of a problem.

Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier]

[2019-07-07 21:30:59+0200] Ulrich Mueller:
> In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
> constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
> the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
> 
> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> suggested one (since the last meeting).
> 
> The agenda for the meeting will be sent out on Sunday 2019-07-14.
> 
> Please reply to the gentoo-project list.
> 
> Ulrich

Not sure if as a non-developer I can call for an agenda item but as it
has been in other threads by developers I think there should be a
removal of the "legal name"[1] part of GLEP-76.

It's been driving at least two active contributors away, with a least
one other person having their name outed, which is a seriously bad
flag. (I don't have the link right now to it but could find it at a
later time. And I think it would be better to not send it publicly
anyway)

Which is also the reason to why I wouldn't have trust in a
proxy/compromise similar such as having the real name known by
so-called "trustees".

1: Which is very vague as depending on the jurisdiction you can quite
easily change your name either with a bit of money for the paperwork
or having testimony from people that they know you under this name.

-- 
Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier

Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Tue, 09 Jul 2019, Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier wrote:

> Not sure if as a non-developer I can call for an agenda item but as it
> has been in other threads by developers I think there should be a
> removal of the "legal name"[1] part of GLEP-76.

> It's been driving at least two active contributors away, with a least
> one other person having their name outed, which is a seriously bad
> flag. (I don't have the link right now to it but could find it at a
> later time. And I think it would be better to not send it publicly
> anyway)

Contributors will need proxy committers in any case, who can then
signoff the commit with their real name. This has explicitly been
clarified in the meeting when GLEP 76 was accepted [1]:

| - Pseudonymous / anonymous contributions would have to be proxied to
|   ::gentoo by a committer with real name.

So, we can discuss your item, but I don't think that it raises anything
new that hasn't been addressed in [2].

> [...]

> 1: Which is very vague as depending on the jurisdiction you can quite
> easily change your name either with a bit of money for the paperwork
> or having testimony from people that they know you under this name.

Right, but if your government issues a passport with that name, it isn't
up to us to question it.

Ulrich

[1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20180909-summary.txt
[2] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20180909.txt (20:15-20:30)

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier]

[2019-07-13 09:39:15+0200] Ulrich Mueller:
> >>>>> On Tue, 09 Jul 2019, Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier wrote:
> 
> > Not sure if as a non-developer I can call for an agenda item but as it
> > has been in other threads by developers I think there should be a
> > removal of the "legal name"[1] part of GLEP-76.
> 
> > It's been driving at least two active contributors away, with a least
> > one other person having their name outed, which is a seriously bad
> > flag. (I don't have the link right now to it but could find it at a
> > later time. And I think it would be better to not send it publicly
> > anyway)
> 
> Contributors will need proxy committers in any case, who can then
> signoff the commit with their real name. This has explicitly been
> clarified in the meeting when GLEP 76 was accepted [1]:
> 
> | - Pseudonymous / anonymous contributions would have to be proxied to
> |   ::gentoo by a committer with real name.
> 
> So, we can discuss your item, but I don't think that it raises anything
> new that hasn't been addressed in [2].

Oh, I wasn't aware of this decision. And I can confirm that I agree
with the decision taken in the meeting and so that it addresses my item.

Unfortunatetly, it doesn't looks like it was addressed and/or clarified
in the glep-0076.rst document by looking at the git history.[3]

> > 1: Which is very vague as depending on the jurisdiction you can quite
> > easily change your name either with a bit of money for the paperwork
> > or having testimony from people that they know you under this name.
> 
> Right, but if your government issues a passport with that name, it isn't
> up to us to question it.

Okay, wasn't sure of the policy regarding legal names as it quite
depends between something you can use for administrative purposes and
something like a identity document like a passport.
So might be a good idea to clarify this one to be sure that people are
going to use the right one.

> Ulrich
> 
> [1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20180909-summary.txt
> [2] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20180909.txt (20:15-20:30)

[3]: https://gitweb.gentoo.org/data/glep.git/log/glep-0076.rst

Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[desultory]

On 07/07/19 15:30, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
> constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
> the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
> 
> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> suggested one (since the last meeting).
> 
> The agenda for the meeting will be sent out on Sunday 2019-07-14.
> 
> Please reply to the gentoo-project list.
> 
> Ulrich
> 
Since that I was directed to ask the council for their opinion regarding
proctors handling of CoC matters by a member of proctors.

Does the council consider that proctors internally formulating new
policies, issuing a warning for having violated such (still unpublished)
policies, and refusing to reply as a team when asked (by multiple
individuals) to clarify what the new policies in fact were is a suitable
usage of the authority delegated to proctors by the council?

Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Matthew Thode]

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On 19-07-12 23:28:09, desultory wrote:
> On 07/07/19 15:30, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
> > constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
> > the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
> > 
> > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> > suggested one (since the last meeting).
> > 
> > The agenda for the meeting will be sent out on Sunday 2019-07-14.
> > 
> > Please reply to the gentoo-project list.
> > 
> > Ulrich
> > 
> Since that I was directed to ask the council for their opinion regarding
> proctors handling of CoC matters by a member of proctors.
> 
> Does the council consider that proctors internally formulating new
> policies, issuing a warning for having violated such (still unpublished)
> policies, and refusing to reply as a team when asked (by multiple
> individuals) to clarify what the new policies in fact were is a suitable
> usage of the authority delegated to proctors by the council?
> 

I wonder if it'd be better to think of proctors as local law enforcement
and comrel as the national level.  similar roles, different scopes.

-- 
Matthew Thode (prometheanfire)

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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Michał Górny]

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On Fri, 2019-07-12 at 23:28 -0400, desultory wrote:
> On 07/07/19 15:30, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > In two weeks from now, the newly elected Council will have its
> > constituent meeting. This is the time to raise and prepare items that
> > the Council should put on the agenda to discuss or vote on.
> > 
> > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> > suggested one (since the last meeting).
> > 
> > The agenda for the meeting will be sent out on Sunday 2019-07-14.
> > 
> > Please reply to the gentoo-project list.
> > 
> > Ulrich
> > 
> Since that I was directed to ask the council for their opinion regarding
> proctors handling of CoC matters by a member of proctors.
> 
> Does the council consider that proctors internally formulating new
> policies, issuing a warning for having violated such (still unpublished)
> policies, and refusing to reply as a team when asked (by multiple
> individuals) to clarify what the new policies in fact were is a suitable
> usage of the authority delegated to proctors by the council?
> 

Did Council actually delegate any authority to Proctors?  I don't see
anything in Council logs about that.  I thought Proctors were
an internal ComRel thing.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2019-07-21

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Sat, 13 Jul 2019, Michał Górny wrote:

> Did Council actually delegate any authority to Proctors?  I don't see
> anything in Council logs about that.  I thought Proctors were
> an internal ComRel thing.

https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20180909-summary.txt
(agenda item 3, bug #663466)

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