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

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 8:59 AM, Aaron Bauman <bman@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> You are focusing on purely financial or tangible gains and attempting to pander law based interpretations of a conflict of interest which are inaccurate.  Please, go read and stop spreading false information.
>

Whether Gentoo ought to use the standards for conflict of interest
that most organizations and courts use is one matter.  Whether or not
I'm accurately stating what these standards are is another.

If you feel that having rendered a judgement on a matter creates a
conflict of interest when hearing an appeal I'm certainly interested
in citations that support this argument, or documented policies that
prohibit these situations in mainstream organizations.

Wikipedia has a reasonable write-up of what conflict of interest is if
you're interested, and it largely agrees with what I'm saying.  If you
feel otherwise feel free to cite any portion you consider contrary and
elaborate, or any other reasonable source.

I'll go ahead and cite a reasonable summary from the top of the
Wikipedia article:
A widely used definition is: "A conflict of interest is a set of
circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or
actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a
secondary interest."[1] Primary interestrefers to the principal goals
of the profession or activity, such as the protection of clients, the
health of patients, the integrity of research, and the duties of
public officer. Secondary interest includes personal benefit and is
not limited to only financial gain but also such motives as the desire
for professional advancement, or the wish to do favours for family and
friends.

Certainly in a situation where a secondary interest such as the above
exists a Council member should both recuse themselves from a Council
appeal, and from the original decision in Comrel/QA/whatever, because
the interest would be just as much a problem there.

-- 
Rich