Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [RFC] Undertakers: appeal policy

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sat, Sep 21, 2019 at 9:54 AM Richard Yao <ryao@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> That said, I want to point out that our ability to move in a
> constructive direction after discussion is praiseworthy. I have
> recently had exposure to certain other areas of the OSS community
> where disagreements are not handled well. I find our approach to
> things to be a breath of fresh air in comparison.

I suspect a lot of that has to do with the fact that our distro is
strongly organized around some principles that are fairly unique in
the FOSS world.  We're source-based with an emphasis on user choice,
and also stick close to upstream.  The latter is fairly uncommon, and
the former is basically non-existent elsewhere.

So, even those who have become extremely exasperated with the overall
community still tend to stick around.  Our PMS is largely maintained
by a former dev who many do not get along with.  Our founder isn't
really involved as a dev but never wanders too far and maintains a
fairly friendly fork.  Many who are devs have waxed and waned in
activity but even after expressing extreme frustration tend to return
after a break.

We're also a small community, so when there are disagreements they
might seem large in that context, but the number of people involved
tends to still be very small.  That means that there is less
temptation for groups of contributors to go off and start forks.

All of that has its pros and cons.  The obvious pro is that it tends
to keep us together and I think it really does demonstrate how a group
that is fairly diverse in many ways can rally around just a few common
goals, even if we sometimes disagree vigorously about all sorts of
things.  The obvious con is that we don't really have much of a
release valve for disagreement and so battles tend to just rage on
over certain things, with the distro reaching uncomfortable
compromises instead of a few forks organized more closely around one
principle or another.

-- 
Rich