Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Council nominee 2018/19 questions

[Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2931 bytes --]

>>>>> On Wed, 27 Jun 2018, Michał Górny wrote:

> Three more questions from me:

> 1. Do you believe that Council members should respect the requests
> of the developer community even if they disagree with them?
> Or should Council members decide based on their own judgment of
> arguments presented?

> Example: there's a heated debate, and the majority of respondents
> request that X is implemented.  However, after reading all the
> arguments you don't think that X is a good idea but you haven't
> managed to convince others.  Would you vote for X (as your
> electorate demands) or against it (as you believe is better for
> the distro)?

Things are usually not as clear cut as in your constructed example.
If there is consensus in a discussion (which doesn't exclude that
there could be single dissenting voices) then generally the council
should go with that. However, if there's consensus then normally
there's no reason for the council to get involved.

OTOH, if there is disagreement then the council may be asked to
resolve the issue. That's the reason why the council exists in the
first place, namely to have a procedure for deciding global issues,
without the need to have an all-devs vote for everything.

In short, I would not vote against developer consensus, but in case of
an unresolved controversy my vote would be based on my judgement what
will be best for the distro.

> 2. Do you believe that the Council should proactively research the
> state of affairs and make decisions whenever they believe the
> direction of the distribution needs to be adjusted?  Or should it
> be passive and avoid involvement unless developers explicitly
> request Council's intervention?

How would you even measure "proactivity", and how would you
distinguish between "the Council" and its members acting as
individuals? If I look at the number of agenda items for the past
term (excluding unfinished business and open bugs), then about 75% of
the items were submitted by council members, 20% by other developers,
and 5% by users. Then again, are council members simply submitting so
much because they at the same time are very active devs, or in their
capacity as council members?

> 3. Do you believe the developer community should hold the power
> to veto or dissolve the Council at any point?  Provided there's
> a global developer vote agreeing on that.

Presumably, I would not oppose a voting system similar to Debian's
"general resolution" (as suggested in [1]), if it has reasonably high
thresholds (because dissolving the Council every other month won't
help us either).

OTOH, I am a friend of the KISS principle [2], and we should be very
careful not to unnecessarily complicate our processes by adding too
many layers.

Ulrich

[1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20180408-summary.txt
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 490 bytes --]