Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for Gentoo Council nominees: GLEP 76

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 12:48 AM desultory <desultory@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> On 06/28/19 08:09, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 7:49 AM Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> I never stated that the trustees will know better, I stated that
> >> their knowledge of what we assume to be real names will be
> >> sufficient and there is no need for all developers to know them.
> >> This is because the trustees are responsible for legal issues of
> >> Gentoo.
> >>
> >> With such approach we lose nothing, but gain something valuable: we
> >> may and will accept more people and more contributions.
> >
> > IMO you lose a professional atmosphere.  I think there is a difference
> > in atmosphere when you have Andrew and Rich and Michał having a
> > discussion, versus codebozo and leetcoder and trollmaster.  (Just
> > making up random handles - no correspondence implied.)
> >
> What you describe as, in effect, a dehumamizing interface, others
> perceive as a way to keep minimize their social exposure. Where you find
> some ill-defined negative, others find a distinct positive. Is Gentoo
> really in a position where it can turn away demonstrably skilled
> contributors based solely on their wanting to minimize personal exposure?

I think either decision will turn people away.

You claim that we have an environment that people do not want to be
personally exposed to.  I think it makes more sense to fix these
issues than to cover them up by making it easier to avoid personal
association with the distro.

Minimizing social exposure also means minimizing the personal
consequences of your own actions.  I suspect that is likely to make
the existing problems worse.

I think it is more important to make Gentoo a project that people are
proud to be associated with.  This isn't just to avoid personal damage
to reputation, but because it will actually make people want to
participate.

If Gentoo turns into just another online forum where everybody trolls
everybody else all the time and nobody bothers to do anything about
it, then why would anybody but a troll want to participate?

> "Other people do it" is not exactly a great logical argument

Sure, not on its own.  However, keep in mind that most of the stuff
that people are complaining about with regard to GLEP 76 are standing
policy in other well-funded and mainstream FOSS projects, like the
Linux kernel.

The fact that the Linux Foundation considers something a good idea
doesn't automatically make it a good idea.  However, they do have all
those pesky lawyers and all that which people seem to think we don't
have enough of, and they also have a very positive reputation for the
most part.  I don't see too many people who are ashamed to have their
name in a signed-off-by header in the kernel.

It doesn't hurt to point out when a process resembles something that
has been used elsewhere, so that others can look more closely and
decide for themselves whether this has been a positive or negative
thing.  MANY of Gentoo's policies are patterned after things other
projects have done, since there is no point in re-inventing the wheel.

-- 
Rich