Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: council members and appeals

[Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org>]

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On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 5:23 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 12:51 AM, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >
> > In some fields (law, or finance for example) there are rules against
> having
> > even potential conflicts. Should Gentoo emulate those rules and produce
> an
> > organization that avoids even the appearance of conflict?
>
> Absolutely!
>

> > A council member is on a team (not even necessarily QA / Comrel). That
> > team's lead makes a decision. The council member doesn't agree with the
> > decision and appeals to council.
> > I would argue the member raising the issue has a conflict and they should
> > not vote (recuse / abstain).
>
> Merely disagreeing with a decision is not a conflict of interest on its
> own.
>

> A conflict exists when somebody stands to personally benefit from a
> decision.  What personal benefit does a member of a team get from
> appealing a disagreement?




> Now, if the decision concerned them personally in some way I could see
> a conflict, such as if it were about a reimbursement of an expense
> they incurred, or if it were about sponsoring them to go on a trip.
>
I wouldn't even consider it a conflict of interest if it were a QA
> decision on a commit they made, unless this commit furthered some kind
> of work they were doing outside of Gentoo (the commit benefited their
> employer or their consulting business).
>
> Conflict of interest isn't the same as disagreement.  It is completely
> normal and healthy for people to disagree with things.  This does not
> in any way make them prejudiced or likely to make a decision that is
> bad for the distro.
>

> Again, I'm completely in favor of avoiding conflicts of interest.  It
> just seems that there is a popular notion around here of what a
> conflict of interest is which certainly wouldn't stand up in a court
> of law, or really in any organization.  Perhaps this is why so many
> seem to be paranoid that there is some kind of cabal running the show.
> (One which is elected, so presumably this cabal is upwards of 30+
> people.)
>

Ok I don't want to have a discussion about what is a conflict or not;
because I don't think the conversation solves the problems (which are
ill-specified, hoping William will use more words.) The original post
discussed appeals to the council. My understanding is that there is a
potential trust issue and William thinks removing 'conflicts' (and I use
the loosest definition of conflict here) will help improve trust. Assuming
developers have concerns about 'conflicts', having a conversation where you
say their concerns are invalid based on 'an interpretation of the phrase
conflict of interest' doesn't really address these developer concerns (and
in fact does the opposite.)

So I'd like to see the developer concerns expressed in a clearer way so we
can have a frank discussion. If there are no explicit concerns and we are
just discussing potential problems;  then I'm less likely to advocate for
policy changes based on things that have not happened yet.

-A


>
> --
> Rich
>
>

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