Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2018-04-08

[Matthias Maier <tamiko@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018, at 17:11 CDT, Matthias Maier <tamiko@gentoo.org> wrote:

> [...]


I have the feeling that quite a bit of the current heated discussion
(about whatever) stems from a perceived lack of "democracy" in our
processes.


Therefore, I suggest as meeting agenda that the council discusses the
introduction of a "general resolution" similarly to the one that Debian
has [1]. Debian's version would have to be adapted to Gentoo specifics
but in short a possible version could include

 - overruling council (and comrel?) decisions with a 2:1 majority
 - a vote of no confidence forcing council reelections
 - accepting/withdrawing/... GLEPs with a 2:1 majority 

A vote could be initiated by

 - the council itself
 - a sufficient number of developers seconding the motion

Eligible voters would be Gentoo developers.


I am happy to author a first draft proposal GLEP. If this idea finds
enough supporters on the developer side and on the council, I suggest to
proceed as follows:

 - let council accept the GLEP
 - initiate a "general resolution" (or however we end up naming the
   child) asking to support the GLEP formally.


I am tired of hearing that my decisions and that of my colleagues on the
council would be due to some agenda, sinister behavior or
whatever. A "general resolution" would introduce a nice mechanism that
would deter loud single voices ("the majority of developers is against
this and that") and let just speak the body of developers itself. I
suggest we make the bar of initiating such a vote relatively high (but
by no means impossible) so that we don't get swamped with too much
stuff, though.

Best,
Matthias


[1] https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-4