[gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Robin H. Johnson]

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(Please reply on the gentoo-project list, I have set the Reply-To header
for this mail appropriately).

===
TL;DR: 
- Does GLEP39 still serve all the needs of Gentoo? Devrel useful?
- How to improve ourselves as a distribution (technical) and as people
  (personal interactions)?
- Would EVERY developer please start acting professionally in all fora?
===

I would like us to thank (and remember those no longer with us) all of
the past trustees and council members (a near-complete list is included
as footnote [9]), for what they have done to try and grow the
distribution.

Regardless of whoever who decides to run for council and trustees this
year, I would like to ask developers and foundation members to look at
the history of Gentoo, prior councils and prior trustees, and ask
themselves: 
What value does the distribution, Council, and Trustees provide to you?
Why they are voting for any given candidate; is this the best for the
future of Gentoo, or does it really even matter?

Of candidates: Is it because of their technical prowess; ability to
reach compromises; they can manage people well; possibly because you
simply like or respect them; or because they're a hothead and you want
to shake things up?  Regardless of why you pick them, all of the above
are things they may have to do on the council and trustees.

I have contributed just over a decade of my life to Gentoo at this
point, many times choosing consulting work or jobs because they enabled
me to contribute more.  I'm one of the very few developers that has been
both a council member and a trustee, the others are: dberkholz, seemant,
swift, agriffis, azarah, wolf31o2

In 2006, I ran for council, on a platform of improving the security of the
Portage tree, via my tree-signing GLEPs.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/39928/focus=40610
I would call that project a long-term failure; the standards were completed,
but like many GLEPs, mostly become forgotten and left by the wayside.
In that original goal, I would consider my term on the council to be a failure,
but extremely enlightening as to the politics and human aspect of a technical
organization. I left at the end of my term, not seeking re-election.

In 2009, I ran for trustees on a platform of radical transparency, that
manifesto is also still available
http://dev.gentoo.org/~robbat2/robbat2-foundation2009-manifesto.txt
My goals were somewhat less quantifiable at the time, but I feel that I
did help bring trustees to the same well-documented level as council;
our financial & legal affairs are in good shape (many thanks to
quantumsummers), and well-visible to the member base (yes, I would like
a return to visible quarterly accounting or more detailed granularity,
but we don't have that many transactions). I ran again successfully in
2011, because I wasn't done my work yet.

I choose to not nominate anybody for either body this time; not because
I have no faith in my fellow developers, but because I think we as a
distribution have needs beyond our present structure of Council and
Trustees, *Rel and the projects.

Many of our early organizational issues have been replaced with those of
a more mature organization. I think to a degree, we have grown beyond
GLEP39.  Go ahead, read GLEP39 again, and think about it from the
perspective of a new(er) developer, vs. The Old Ones (as I saw it put
recently). Now go to the projects that you're in, and tell me, when was
the last time you had a real discussion about who lead a given project
(the GLEP was careful to say 'selection' rather than 'election'). Does
who "leads" a project actually matter in all cases? If a more
established dev refuses a change, what can you do?

The council, originally founded as technical body in 2005, has been
running for 8 years, and in that time GLEP submissions have been
replaced by EAPI changes to a minor degree, but overall we are no longer
adapting to change as we once were.

GLEP submissions have dropped dramatically, and instead we have a lot
less highly visible change (unless it breaks things). Does this mean I
expect everything to be a GLEP? No, the GLEP process in itself can be a
hindrance to getting what you want done, and regardless of how great an
idea it is, it doesn't guarantee adoption. Should we scrap GLEPs
entirely? No, we should push even more of our changes through them,
because they are a lot less personal than other proposals on the mailing
lists. They are TECHNICAL improvements, and need to be considered
PROFESSIONALLY, without any personal malice.

Put the GLEPs to the council if they need more consensus, and the
council needs to consider/approve them more often. If it's just smaller
technical changes, let any developer feel free to do it; and take
responsibility for their actions if they cause any breakage. Herds were
created to group related ebuilds together (not developers), nor to stop
development.

Many times in our history, we have tried to grapple with the human
problems in our distribution, many times unsuccessfully.
I was there when:
- The Zynot Fork (2003)
- The Ombudsman position (GLEP7) was formed due to the Zynot conflict
- The first NFP board was formed (2004)
- drobbins leaving Gentoo [the first time] (2005)
- The "Gentoo Women" project (2006) with the Mens' Rights attacks.
- Council implemented the first CoC & Proctors (2007) with early
  Paludis/EAPI conflicts.
- Our corporation status was temporarily revoked (2008), and drobbins
  came back briefly.
- Exherbo started/forked (2008)
- LolGentoo/LolFlameeyes attack blogs (2008)
- Gentoo Ten (2009)
- The ongoing matters of the eudev fork & systemd-integration 
(the above are the ones that come to mind, I'm sure I'm missing many
more).

Various inappropriate, emotionally charged remarks on Gentoo-related
blogs as well as official mailing lists:
- Our inter-dev Israeli/Palestine conflict
- "mips team killed the baby jesus"
- "Over my dead CVS"
- "Ten Ways PMS Raped your Baby"
- "the council needs to grow a pair"
(apologies to geoman, flameeyes, ciaranm, wolf31o2 and other developers
for the example usage).

Many of these and more all showed us times where we had problems
interacting with each other as decent and good people. The statements
themselves were hostile, degrading & hurtful, but so was the environment
that engendered them.

We "solve" this, we tried to add the Ombudsman, CoC, Proctors, Developer
Relations, User Relations (later also Community Relations), but they
were primarily punitive measures. Many of these were founded/developed
by the Council, as extensions beyond the pre-existing devrel role (yes,
it predates council). 

NONE of those measures really worked, many of them caused more dissent
[1].
Even GLEP39 laid it out clearly:
"Regardless of whether or not it is justified, devrel is loathed by many
in its enforcement role."

Instead, I would like to call on every developer, foundation member, and
general member of the community, to stand up for being professional, and
hold all other developers to the same standard.

Think to yourself:
"If I said $X to my boss or underlings at work, would I get fired or
sued for abuse or harassment?"

Watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaqpoeVgr8U&feature=player_embedded
It's the head of the Australian Armed Forces encouraging everybody to
take a stand against sexual harassment. 
(Apologies to those to the deaf members of the community, I could only
find a partial transcript here [2])

The Internet remembers a lot of things, even when you think it's not
being logged, and your past will come back to you; clean up your act
before it's too late to save yourself.

If you think you're going to take whatever results you get from your
statements, and continue to be hostile, then GTFO.

If anybody else has other suggestions how we can improve the
distribution, beyond dropping devrel from GLEP39, I'm all ears.

[1] "If You Won't Play Nice I'll Take My Ball And Go Home.", Andrew Trelane vs. Ciaranm (2009)
http://www.trelane.net/blog/trelane/2009/09/if_you_wont_play_nice_ill_take_my_ball_and_go_home?page=4
[2] "The Standard You Walk Past is the Standard You Accept", Rebecca
Watson, partial transcript and commentary on sexual harassment in the
Australian Military (2013)
http://skepchick.org/2013/06/the-standard-you-walk-past-is-the-standard-you-accept/

[9] Past Council & trustees
Past council members
--------------------
(sorted by meeting attendance)
 77 betelgeuse
 45 dberkholz
 38 ulm
 37 chainsaw
 31 dertobi123
 30 scarabeus
 29 vapier
 28 lu_zero
 25 jmbsvicetto
 24 solar
 24 grobian
 21 leio
 18 flameeyes
 14 wired
 14 halcy0n
 13 wolf31o2
 13 robbat2
 13 Kugelfang
 13 KingTaco
 12 SwifT
 12 jokey
 12 ferringb
 11 williamh
 11 seemant
 11 Koon
 11 kloeri
 11 hwoarang
 11 dev-zero
 11 calchan
 10 cardoe
  9 agriffis
  8 UberLord
  8 azarah
  8 amne
  6 patrick
  1 jaervosz

Past trustees
-------------
(Many of the early years of foundation, there was not good recording, so
I don't have a complete list of meeting attendance, or even meetings
prior to 2008)
2008-present (alphabetical):
dabbott
fmccor
g2boojum
neddyseagoon
quantumsummers
rich0
robbat2
tgall_foo
tsunam
wltjr

2006 trustees (semi-alphabetical):
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/399
g2boojum
mcummings
seemant
stuart
wolf31o2
rl03 (seemant resigned 2 days after being elected)
pauldv (stuart resigned 1 month after being elected)

The first elected trustees in 2005 (alphabetical):
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/252
carpaski
cshields
dmwaters
dostrow
g2boojum
jhuebel
klieber
kumba
pylon
ramereth
seemant
spyderous (now known as dberkholz)
swift

The original NFP board in 2004 (alphabetical):
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/72
agriffis
azarah
carpaski
dmwaters
g2boojum
klieber
method
pauldv
pfeifer
seemant
swift
zhen

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux: Developer, Trustee & Infrastructure Lead
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85

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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Sun, 16 Jun 2013 21:21:24 +0000
"Robin H. Johnson" <robbat2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> - Would EVERY developer please start acting professionally in all
> fora?

The word "professionally" is a dangerous one due to its many
interpretations. Would you say that concealing problems, downplaying
bugs, not admitting to large-scale problems and attempting to keep
issues private is professional? Transparency and honesty aren't exactly
hallmarks of professional development, since good PR and lawyers are
usually cheaper than delivering a good product.

Looking at it another way, do you believe Gentoo should be aiming to
deliver a good product to gain a good public image, or should it be
looking at getting a good public image?

<repositioning for convenience>
> "If I said $X to my boss or underlings at work, would I get fired or
> sued for abuse or harassment?"

If you publicly admitted to a horrible data loss bug at work that your
boss thought could be covered up, blamed on user error etc, would you
get fired or sued?

> We "solve" this, we tried to add the Ombudsman, CoC, Proctors,
> Developer Relations, User Relations (later also Community Relations),
> but they were primarily punitive measures. Many of these were
> founded/developed by the Council, as extensions beyond the
> pre-existing devrel role (yes, it predates council). 
> 
> NONE of those measures really worked, many of them caused more dissent

The failure is because ultimately, Gentoo was focusing upon the wrong
thing. At the time, Gentoo had an awful lot of middle management, PR
and HR, and practically nothing in the way of technical innovation. The
result was a large focus upon "building a community" (mostly comprised
of vocal forums users who did not use Gentoo). Again, the community is
something that should come about as a result of a good product, not
something that should be built at the expense of a product.

This hasn't improved, either. Gentoo still can't deliver non-trivial
technical changes. There's no tree signing. There's no Git migration.
There's no proper overlay support. There are no major fixes to the
ebuild format. There's no proper cross compiling or multilib. There are
no "optional" dependencies. There's no proper SCM package support.
There's no VDB replacement.

Gentoo doesn't have growing pains. It stopped growing a long time ago.
What it has is a crippling inability to make improvements. Trying to
build a community on top of that is only making the problem worse. The
focus should be upon reversing the stagnation, and using a better
distribution as a way of getting healthier interactions.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Markos Chandras]

On 16 June 2013 22:21, Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> (Please reply on the gentoo-project list, I have set the Reply-To header
> for this mail appropriately).
>
> ===
> TL;DR:
> - Does GLEP39 still serve all the needs of Gentoo? Devrel useful?
> - How to improve ourselves as a distribution (technical) and as people
>   (personal interactions)?
> - Would EVERY developer please start acting professionally in all fora?
> ===
>
Hi Robin

I am really glad you sent that e-mail. Personally, I will try to give
short answers to the previously mentioned bullet points.

- DevRel is useful as long as GLEP39 is in place. I wish we could get
rid of GLEP39 but I believe council is the only entity that can
render this GLEP obsolete.
- We can't improve ourselves. People don't change. You can either
behave good or you can't. If you need a slap to make you behave
nicely, then this is not going to work in the long-term. And you can't
improve a distribution technical wise, if you have people who can't
work together.
- We've been requesting this for a very very long time, yet 2 days ago
we had another incident. So I'd say, no, we can't.

--
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Petteri Räty]

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On 17.6.2013 11.36, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On 16 June 2013 22:21, Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> (Please reply on the gentoo-project list, I have set the Reply-To header
>> for this mail appropriately).
>>

The same effect could have been more easily accomplished using the
gentoo-dev-announce mailing list (and it would have been in line with
our mailing list policies).

>> ===
>> TL;DR:
>> - Does GLEP39 still serve all the needs of Gentoo? Devrel useful?

To a degree. A round of updates after all these years could be in order.

>> - How to improve ourselves as a distribution (technical) and as people
>>   (personal interactions)?
>> - Would EVERY developer please start acting professionally in all fora?
>> ===
>>
> Hi Robin
> 
> I am really glad you sent that e-mail. Personally, I will try to give
> short answers to the previously mentioned bullet points.
> 

Agreed, a good email. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

> - DevRel is useful as long as GLEP39 is in place. I wish we could get
> rid of GLEP39 but I believe council is the only entity that can
> render this GLEP obsolete.

GLEP 39 was originally voted in by all devs. The council has previously
decided it does not have the authority to change it. It might not be a
bad idea to poll developers in connection to our yearly elections on if
they still think GLEP 39 is current.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Douglas Dunn]

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> GLEP 39 was originally voted in by all devs. The council has previously
> decided it does not have the authority to change it. It might not be a
> bad idea to poll developers in connection to our yearly elections on if
> they still think GLEP 39 is current.
>
> Regards,
> Petteri
>

A good idea i think, but if we can come up with an amendment/replacement
for glep 39 before then, it would be a perfect time to use the opportunity
just to piggyback that vote for that change in with the yearly council
election and kill 2 birds with one stone

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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Petteri Räty]

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On 17.6.2013 23.54, Douglas Dunn wrote:
> 
>> GLEP 39 was originally voted in by all devs. The council has previously
>> decided it does not have the authority to change it. It might not be a
>> bad idea to poll developers in connection to our yearly elections on if
>> they still think GLEP 39 is current.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Petteri
>>
> 
> A good idea i think, but if we can come up with an amendment/replacement
> for glep 39 before then, it would be a perfect time to use the
> opportunity just to piggyback that vote for that change in with the
> yearly council election and kill 2 birds with one stone
> 

Yes the idea was always to time the vote with elections. I think it's
too late now for this year. I think just drafting the
amendment/replacement takes more time than we have. This sounds like
something I could champion but can't really commit to in the near
future. If things outside Gentoo slow down as I hope before the end of
the year I will pick this up though.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Roy Bamford]

On 06/17/13 21:54:08, Douglas Dunn wrote:
> > GLEP 39 was originally voted in by all devs. The council has
> previously
> > decided it does not have the authority to change it. It might not 
> be
> a
> > bad idea to poll developers in connection to our yearly elections 
> on
> if
> > they still think GLEP 39 is current.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Petteri
> >
> 
> A good idea i think, but if we can come up with an
> amendment/replacement
> for glep 39 before then, it would be a perfect time to use the
> opportunity
> just to piggyback that vote for that change in with the yearly 
> council
> election and kill 2 birds with one stone
> 

A GLEP is a GLEP.  A GLEP that obsoletes GLEP 39 can be proposed by 
anyone at any time.  When/if it reaches council, they can determine 
that it needs a dev wide vote.

There is no need to do anything in a hurry.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) an member of
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
trustees

Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 8:12 AM, Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:
> A GLEP is a GLEP.  A GLEP that obsoletes GLEP 39 can be proposed by
> anyone at any time.  When/if it reaches council, they can determine
> that it needs a dev wide vote.
>
> There is no need to do anything in a hurry.

Agreed.  I'm not even sure there is anything wrong with GLEP 39 to
begin with, but if there is we need to form a loose consensus on it
before we put it up to a vote.

My personal sense is that our existing formal policies are fine.
Formal council votes should be used as the final basis of decision for
large issues or ones that aren't resolved in other ways.  Devrel with
their fairly ponderous processes are a good way of handling serious
long-term issues with individual devs.

I think where our gaps lie are with moderation on minor issues that
don't rise to the level of devrel.  I think that informal council
leadership could probably help out there - when there is a general
consensus resisted by a few council members could just point this out
on the list, and generally use their influence to get everybody in
line.  If that isn't sufficient there can always be a formal vote.  I
think much of the pain on some of the long threads isn't that we fail
to form a consensus, but rather that no consensus will ever be 100%
and nobody is finalizing decisions so everybody keeps arguing until
Larry comes home.

If we need policy around dealing with minor behavior issues we already
have it - the currently-unenforced code of conduct already defines a
mechanism for dealing with infractions.  I'm not really sure what is
wrong with the current policy beyond the fact that it was never really
given an opportunity to succeed or fail.

I'm not sure what it is that we hope to accomplish by changing the
meta-structure.  There was chatting on IRC about a benevolent
dictator, but I don't really see many with the time to really engage
at a Council level of involvement let alone with that which would be
required to actually have a dictatorial role (hint, you can't just
pass down edicts and expect people not to quit - if you want anybody
to follow them you need to spend lots of time interacting with the
volunteers you intend to rule).

I think many of our problems also stem from the challenges of
online-only interaction - it is very depersonalizing.  The only way to
really overcome that is to have a lot more contact between leaders and
developers.  The council can't run things only from the benefit of
office - they really need to have substantial interaction with the
community to be effective.  Their job isn't just to vote - it is also
to persuade.  Running an organization of this size in spare time is a
major challenge.  For this reason as developers we also all have a
responsibility to Gentoo to try to make their lives easier...

Rich

Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[hasufell]

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On 06/16/2013 11:21 PM, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> (Please reply on the gentoo-project list, I have set the Reply-To
> header for this mail appropriately).
> 
> === TL;DR: - Does GLEP39 still serve all the needs of Gentoo?
> Devrel useful? - How to improve ourselves as a distribution
> (technical) and as people (personal interactions)? - Would EVERY
> developer please start acting professionally in all fora? ===
> 


Please keep in mind that these are just raw ideas.


- - all? no.
A tiny idea to improve the council just came to my mind: 1-2
representatives of the user community should be voted in. IMO there
are a enough well known personalities in #gentoo, #gentoo-chat, from
the forums or elsewhere.
Also: those guys are not already involved in gentoo development and
(warning: assumption) might have more time to spend on their council duty.
Maybe developers joining the council should even (partly) step back
from their regular ebuild maintenance work, so they have more time for
council work, interacting with user community, dev community, the
whole community and even other communities and come up with some ideas
every few months to be voted on by _us_.

What this is about is actually shifting the duties of the council from
a decision making to a more idea shaping, representative and
arbitrating duty. It should be the first contact point of
inter-projects problems, track opinions and trends in the community,
give recommendations and maybe even advertise gentoo in some
non-intrusive way, in interviews whatever.

We can establish direct democracy very easily through technology via
scripts on woodpecker, a new public mailing list (read only for
non-devs) and a time frame of 4 weeks to vote on a subject for example.

Devrel in it's current form is useless. They should just be
butt-kickers and do that not just on request, but because they listen
to the stuff that happens. And do that consequently. No matter if it's
short- or longterm intervention.

Trolls are still condoned on our mailing lists, even if they are known
for that behavior for years. That conflicts even with our current CoC.
But no one does anything about that.

Devrel should be elected like the council is, not just by a handful of
devs.

However, putting distro-wide decisions in the hands of a few is just
random.

- - Sometimes I think less personal interactions could help in some
situations (I do NOT mean ignoring people when they address you about
a problem). That's part of being professional imo. In other cases we
just need stricter butt-kicking.
On the technical level... well, if the council role is redefined like
I explained above, then we have some people more explicitly working on
improving the very concept of gentoo in general, how we are perceived
by other user communities and so on. Recruiting is still a big issue.
And as I explained in numerous other threads... I was unable to
convince any1 in real life to even TRY gentoo, although I got lots of
arguments. Our documentation is great, but not consistent.
Anyway, our image is not that good and the situation on the ML does
not improve it.
But... being polite does not help, being professional and awesome does.

- - There is always someone silly, trolling or whatever now and then.
The problem is, when it's regular behavior for that person. But people
seem to accommodate to that, especially when those people are
technically adept.
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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:55:40 +0200
hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:
> A tiny idea to improve the council just came to my mind: 1-2
> representatives of the user community should be voted in. IMO there
> are a enough well known personalities in #gentoo, #gentoo-chat, from
> the forums or elsewhere.

The last time something like that was tried, we ended up with a bunch
of non-Gentoo-using prolific Off The Wall posters being selected. That
didn't exactly work out well.

- -- 
Ciaran McCreesh
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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Anthony G. Basile]

On 06/18/2013 09:15 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
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> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:55:40 +0200
> hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> A tiny idea to improve the council just came to my mind: 1-2
>> representatives of the user community should be voted in. IMO there
>> are a enough well known personalities in #gentoo, #gentoo-chat, from
>> the forums or elsewhere.
> The last time something like that was tried, we ended up with a bunch
> of non-Gentoo-using prolific Off The Wall posters being selected. That
> didn't exactly work out well.
>
> - -- 
> Ciaran McCreesh
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I was going to caution against this too.  I've had similar experiences 
on college committees where faculty invited students to participate.  
They really didn't understand the issues and wasted our time with 
non-sequitors.  It was probably equally frustrating to them because they 
tried but could not contribute.  I understand that some contributors are 
more active than some devs, but how would the process differentiate?

-- 
Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D.
Gentoo Linux Developer [Hardened]
E-Mail    : blueness@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP  : 1FED FAD9 D82C 52A5 3BAB  DC79 9384 FA6E F52D 4BBA
GnuPG ID  : F52D4BBA

Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[hasufell]

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Hash: SHA1

On 06/18/2013 03:47 PM, Anthony G. Basile wrote:
> On 06/18/2013 09:15 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: On Tue, 18 Jun 2013
> 14:55:40 +0200 hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>> A tiny idea to improve the council just came to my mind: 1-2 
>>>> representatives of the user community should be voted in. IMO
>>>> there are a enough well known personalities in #gentoo,
>>>> #gentoo-chat, from the forums or elsewhere.
> The last time something like that was tried, we ended up with a
> bunch of non-Gentoo-using prolific Off The Wall posters being
> selected. That didn't exactly work out well.
> 
> -- Ciaran McCreesh
> 
> I was going to caution against this too.  I've had similar
> experiences on college committees where faculty invited students to
> participate. They really didn't understand the issues and wasted
> our time with non-sequitors.  It was probably equally frustrating
> to them because they tried but could not contribute.  I understand
> that some contributors are more active than some devs, but how
> would the process differentiate?
> 


That proposal cannot stand alone. Please respond to the concept I was
pointing out, not a single point.
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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Anthony G. Basile <blueness@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I was going to caution against this too.  I've had similar experiences on
> college committees where faculty invited students to participate.  They
> really didn't understand the issues and wasted our time with non-sequitors.
> It was probably equally frustrating to them because they tried but could not
> contribute.  I understand that some contributors are more active than some
> devs, but how would the process differentiate?

It might also be worth noting that anybody can sit in on a
Council/Trustee meeting.  The Trustees always have an open floor at
the end of the meeting (typically to the sound of crickets).  While
the community cannot vote, I do consider them part of our mandate and
we certainly listen, whether they email us or show up.  My sense is
that the Council is the same.

So, if community members want to attend they should feel welcome to do so.

Oh, and at least as far as the foundation is concerned non-dev members
of the community can volunteer directly in foundation operations.
Obviously for some roles like dealing with finances there is a certain
level of trust that we would need to deal carefully with, but there is
a lot that could be done with the foundation without any commit rights
to anything.  Non-developers can become Foundation members and vote
for Trustees (or even be Trustees), and they can also even become
officers (officers are appointed by the Trustees, not elected).

The reality is that level of interest hasn't been high in this at
least as far as the Foundation goes.  The fact is that doing either
job well involves a commitment.  You really can't just "show up and
vote."  That might be what happens at the meetings, but 95% of the
work involved in running the Foundation is, well, work - not talk
(many thanks to Matthew/David!).  I think an effective Council has to
work similarly - the voting is really just the culmination of a lot of
behind-the-scenes work, planning, negotiations, etc.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Petteri Räty]

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On 18.6.2013 16.59, hasufell wrote:
> On 06/18/2013 03:47 PM, Anthony G. Basile wrote:
>> On 06/18/2013 09:15 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: On Tue, 18 Jun 2013
>> 14:55:40 +0200 hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>>> A tiny idea to improve the council just came to my mind: 1-2 
>>>>> representatives of the user community should be voted in. IMO
>>>>> there are a enough well known personalities in #gentoo,
>>>>> #gentoo-chat, from the forums or elsewhere.
>> The last time something like that was tried, we ended up with a
>> bunch of non-Gentoo-using prolific Off The Wall posters being
>> selected. That didn't exactly work out well.
> 
>> -- Ciaran McCreesh
> 
>> I was going to caution against this too.  I've had similar
>> experiences on college committees where faculty invited students to
>> participate. They really didn't understand the issues and wasted
>> our time with non-sequitors.  It was probably equally frustrating
>> to them because they tried but could not contribute.  I understand
>> that some contributors are more active than some devs, but how
>> would the process differentiate?
> 
> 
> 
> That proposal cannot stand alone. Please respond to the concept I was
> pointing out, not a single point.
> 

As voting has meant everyone with access on dev.gentoo.org, it follows
that in the context of GLEP 39 the term developers includes staffers who
don't have gentoo-x86 access. As such, if the users strongly wish to run
for council they can just take the staff quiz with the sole purpose of
running for council.

Regards,
Petteri


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