Re: [gentoo-project] Council meeting 2015-01-13: call for agenda items

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 9:25 AM, hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Dean Stephens:
>> On 12/29/14 15:06, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>> I'll certainly agree that not everything needs a formal project.
>>> However, if a project wants to have authority/autonomy beyond
>>> anything-goes, then it should welcome members and elect a lead
>>> regularly.
>>>
>> There is at least a defensible argument to be made that being able to
>> reject applicants is more important to being able to maintain a coherent
>> project than the often indicated duty to accept anyone who shows interest.
>>
>
> What about projects that don't even reject, but rather ignore
> devs/contributors?
>
> We tell them to elect a new lead, so we don't have to deal with the
> people who screwed up, but can say "here, they formally are a functional
> project according to a random glep... problem solved".
>

Keep in mind that rules don't exist to justify bad behavior, but to
promote good behavior.

I can guarantee that whatever rules come out of the council meeting
are going to have some loophole that somebody can point to in order to
justify their idiotic behavior.

We should be aiming for a GLEP that promotes a reasonable way for
projects to govern themselves without a lot of unnecessary
overhead/etc.  If somebody wants to contribute to a project and feels
that they can't, they should just ask for help.  I don't want to
burden every group in Gentoo that gets along just fine because some
projects aren't that way.

Really, though, it seems like the biggest complaint is AWOL project
leads or members.  I suggest that the simplest solution in such a case
is for somebody to step up and be bold.  Just send out an email to the
alias announcing that they added themselves to the alias (non-devs can
ask somebody to help out with that), call meetings to discuss things
that are important, and so on.  If not having an active person in
charge is detrimental then the team can just organize an election.
Leadership is more than titles.  FOSS tends to be do-acracy, so if
you're trying to do something you probably have more power than you
realize.

--
Rich