Re: [gentoo-project] Should DevRel members be in Council?

[Rich Freeman <rich@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 7:12 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Quite a few of you know that Council acts as a court in case a developer
> has unresolved disputes with Devrel or when he is not happy with a
> Devrel's decision. The problem is that having the same people in the
> Council and in Devrel makes no sense since the same people will vote
> twice on that matter.

So, the way I view it is the Council is the elected body elected by
the Devs to govern the Devs.  If they feel the best way to resolve
disputes is to have Devrel first hear them then that is fine.  If they
want to personally hear all disputes and have no avenue of appeal
whatsoever that is fine too.  If they want to take turns hearing
disputes and then only hear appeals if there is a majority vote to
even hear the appeal in the first place, that is fine too.

If Devs don't like the way it is being done, they can always elect
somebody else.  If a Dev doesn't like how they were treated they can
ask all the other devs to elect somebody else to reinstate them, fork
the project, or whatever.

All that said, I think the current system works fine and see no need
to change it.  I'd view the Council as being the body that ultimately
makes all DevRel decisions - they just have delegated this
responsibility and only step in if needed.

For these reasons, I see no reason with having overlapping membership
- we're a community and we govern ourselves.  The Council is elected
by the community to speak for the community, and they're allowed to
speak even if they've done so already.

For the same sorts of reasons I also see no issue with having
overlapping Council and Trustee membership (obviously allowing that
the Bylaws would need to be amended if a majority of foundation
members agreed with me).  I do see the value in having more
participation, but not the requirement.

Rich