[gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[John Helmert III]

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Gentoo is a community project. The health of a community project
relies on being controlled by that community. Many developers, and
even council nominees, have employers who many may see as not having
the best interest of open source communities at heart. Note that I do
*not* think that one's employer makes them less valuable as a
contributor, or even that developers employed by certain companies are
unsuitable to be on council. Still, I think that it's important to
keep in mind any potential conflicts of interest between Gentoo and
one's employer.

Thus, I have these questions for nominees:

Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
so, how would you handle the conflict?

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Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[John Helmert III]

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On Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 01:28:51PM -0500, John Helmert III wrote:
> Gentoo is a community project. The health of a community project
> relies on being controlled by that community. Many developers, and
> even council nominees, have employers who many may see as not having
> the best interest of open source communities at heart. Note that I do
> *not* think that one's employer makes them less valuable as a
> contributor, or even that developers employed by certain companies are
> unsuitable to be on council. Still, I think that it's important to
> keep in mind any potential conflicts of interest between Gentoo and
> one's employer.
> 
> Thus, I have these questions for nominees:
> 
> Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
> produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
> so, how would you handle the conflict?

I'll start: I currently have no employer and thus can answer these
questions with "N/A".

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Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[Robin H. Johnson]

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On Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 01:58:14PM -0500, John Helmert III wrote:
> > Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
> > produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
> > so, how would you handle the conflict?
> I'll start: I currently have no employer and thus can answer these
> questions with "N/A".
Ok, I'd like to have a extra portion to this question.

If were to get hired by a organization using Gentoo, do you feel a
conflict of interest might exist, and how would you handle it?

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Treasurer
E-Mail   : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85
GnuPG FP : 7D0B3CEB E9B85B1F 825BCECF EE05E6F6 A48F6136

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Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[John Helmert III]

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On Sat, Jul 02, 2022 at 06:09:11AM +0000, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 01:58:14PM -0500, John Helmert III wrote:
> > > Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
> > > produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
> > > so, how would you handle the conflict?
> > I'll start: I currently have no employer and thus can answer these
> > questions with "N/A".
> Ok, I'd like to have a extra portion to this question.
> 
> If were to get hired by a organization using Gentoo, do you feel a
> conflict of interest might exist, and how would you handle it?

Sure, such a conflict always has a chance of happening. If elected to
council, I will always prioritize Gentoo's interests/health over that
of others in terms of council duties.

> -- 
> Robin Hugh Johnson
> Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Treasurer
> E-Mail   : robbat2@gentoo.org
> GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85
> GnuPG FP : 7D0B3CEB E9B85B1F 825BCECF EE05E6F6 A48F6136



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Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[Sam James]

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> On 2 Jul 2022, at 07:09, Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 01:58:14PM -0500, John Helmert III wrote:
>>> Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
>>> produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
>>> so, how would you handle the conflict?


My employer uses Gentoo quite heavily. We naturally discuss
general and contemporary issues and while new perspectives
often come out of this, it doesn't mean I ever take a position which
goes against wha tI think is best for the community.

Indeed, we often end up talking internally about what might work for us
vs what, if anything, could be done for Gentoo in general.

The default position is generally "do something internally, then iterate
on it to make it upstreamable if it's of interest". And "if it's of interest"
or "if it's appropriate" is always key.

I find these discussions pretty fruitful and I try to share the
insight gained from them. It's not always easy to find out
what our users are struggling with, what they need, what
we're doing well, etc.

(Answering the latter part mixed in the next question...)

>> I'll start: I currently have no employer and thus can answer these
>> questions with "N/A".
> Ok, I'd like to have a extra portion to this question.
> 
> If were to get hired by a organization using Gentoo, do you feel a
> conflict of interest might exist, and how would you handle it?

We had a conversation about this at the very beginning and they
(before I even had a chance to bring up the topic) made clear
they don't want to affect my judgement of what I think is best
for Gentoo and the community.

As an example of this, we regularly use an overlay for things which
either aren't suitable for :;gentoo, or aren't yet suitable for ::gentoo.

This is pretty similar to what the other folks have said in this thread
- upstream what's possible/useful to others, and fork what isn't.

I've never felt pressured to make a decision a certain way
and I don't anticipate it happening. If it did, I'd leave
the council. But I'd really try de-escalate before it
got to that point -- it's normal for anyone using e.g.
Gentoo at work (or any FOSS) to regularly have to
make calls on what makes sense as a "local solution"
vs something to upstream. I can't imagine a situation
in my current circumstances where that wouldn't
be the way out.

> 
> --
> Robin Hugh Johnson
> Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Treasurer
> E-Mail   : robbat2@gentoo.org
> GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85
> GnuPG FP : 7D0B3CEB E9B85B1F 825BCECF EE05E6F6 A48F6136

best,
sam


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Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[Jakov Smolić]

On 7/1/22 20:58, John Helmert III wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 01, 2022 at 01:28:51PM -0500, John Helmert III wrote:
>> Gentoo is a community project. The health of a community project
>> relies on being controlled by that community. Many developers, and
>> even council nominees, have employers who many may see as not having
>> the best interest of open source communities at heart. Note that I do
>> *not* think that one's employer makes them less valuable as a
>> contributor, or even that developers employed by certain companies are
>> unsuitable to be on council. Still, I think that it's important to
>> keep in mind any potential conflicts of interest between Gentoo and
>> one's employer.
>>
>> Thus, I have these questions for nominees:
>>
>> Does your employer use Gentoo?If elected to council, could this
>> produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If

Yes, my employer does use Gentoo. I work in a small Croatian company 
that focuses on embedded Linux development. We
use Gentoo in one of our projects, a custom build system for embedded 
devices (something similar to OpenWRT and Yocto).
However, I am working on a different project (with different OS and 
tooling) since early this year, so I don't see any possible conflicts 
happening there (even if I do work on it again I doubt any conflicts 
would arise as my Gentoo work there revolved around merely upstreaming 
bug fixes we encountered while using Gentoo).

All of my Gentoo contributions related with my day job were various 
improvements (e.g. updating an outdated package, adding support for 
missing useful features or packages, fixing cross-compilation bugs, 
etc.) so I believe these changes were useful to the whole community and 
not just my company. We also have a local overlay for all packages
and patches that don't make sense having in ::gentoo.

>> so, how would you handle the conflict?

I'd never deliberately make changes or influence decisions that would be 
detrimental to Gentoo.
If elected to Council and ever find myself in a situation where conflict 
harmful to Gentoo is unavoidable, I will resign from my Council position.

> 
> I'll start: I currently have no employer and thus can answer these
> questions with "N/A".

-- 
Jakov

Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[Michał Górny]

On Fri, 2022-07-01 at 13:28 -0500, John Helmert III wrote:
> Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
> produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
> so, how would you handle the conflict?

I work as a programmer, with little relevance to the underlying Linux
distro (I do the portable part of my work on my Gentoo system, though).
My direct employer uses NetBSD and my work is sponsored by the FreeBSD
Foundation.  No conflicts expected there.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Fri, 01 Jul 2022, John Helmert wrote:

> Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
> produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo?
> If so, how would you handle the conflict?

I am working at a university. I don't expect any conflict of interest.

Ulrich

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Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[Jonas Stein]

> Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
> produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
> so, how would you handle the conflict?

I'm working as a scientist.
All my Gentoo contributions were made in my spare time.
So I see no conflicts.

-- 
Best,
Jonas

Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[Matt Turner]

On Fri, Jul 1, 2022 at 2:28 PM John Helmert III <ajak@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
> produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
> so, how would you handle the conflict?

I work for Google on ChromeOS graphics (Mesa 3D drivers primarily)

ChromeOS is built on Gentoo, and my Gentoo knowledge and experience is
useful for my work, but my job isn't packaging, build tooling, etc.
ChromeOS has a ::portage-stable repository that contains near-verbatim
copies of ebuilds from ::gentoo but also a ::chromiumos-overlay
repository for forked ebuilds. There are also forked eclasses, etc, so
ChromeOS is pretty insulated from changes in ::gentoo.

If there's ever a need to patch something (and it doesn't make sense
to patch it in ::gentoo) it's handled in ::chromiumos-overlay. In that
way, I don't really see a lot of potential for conflicts of interest
affecting Gentoo packaging, if handled properly.

An example of a case where I fixed something in ::gentoo for ChromeOS
is commit 326082ed7b1 ("app-misc/tmux: Add patch to fix cross
compiling"). It was a simple cherry-pick of an upstream patch to fix
cross-compilation—something that ChromeOS relies on but doesn't get a
ton of testing in Gentoo-proper.

I see this as an opportunity for collaboration much more so than a
potential for conflict. I would never make or advocate for changes to
Gentoo that helped ChromeOS to the detriment of Gentoo.

Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for nominees

[Georgy Yakovlev]

On Fri, 2022-07-01 at 13:28 -0500, John Helmert III wrote:
> > Gentoo is a community project. The health of a community project
> > relies on being controlled by that community. Many developers, and
> > even council nominees, have employers who many may see as not
> > having
> > the best interest of open source communities at heart. Note that I
> > do
> > *not* think that one's employer makes them less valuable as a
> > contributor, or even that developers employed by certain companies
> > > are
> > unsuitable to be on council. Still, I think that it's important to
> > keep in mind any potential conflicts of interest between Gentoo and
> > one's employer.
> > 
> > Thus, I have these questions for nominees:
> > 
> > Does your employer use Gentoo? If elected to council, could this
> > produce a conflict of interest between your employer and Gentoo? If
> > so, how would you handle the conflict?

I've included disclosure in my manifesto, but I'll answer here directly
too.

I'm employed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and we use Gentoo at
work.
My everyday work is not related to Getnoo in any way. I work in a
completely different area, using different tooling and OS-es.
I help with maintenance of some packages my employer might be using,
but as a backup maintainer (docker stack comes to mind), that's not
dictated by anyone, it's purely voluntary, just wanted to help williamh
with maintenance and keep an eye on alt-arch bugs. We are probably the
only distro who have docker stack functional on big-endian ppc64
because of those efforts.

I do not see any possible conflict of interest happening in my current
position and situation in foreseeable future.
But if conflict somehow happens ( I assume harmful to Gentoo scenario )
I will not in any way force it on Gentoo, and will resign from council
if conflict is unavoidable and harmful to Gentoo.