[gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Michał Górny]

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Hello, everyone.

This is something I wanted to discuss back in April but due to the peak
of covid pandemic I've delayed it.  Today things seem to be improving
a bit, at least in Europe, so I'd like to bring it up now, especially
with the elections coming soon.


Gentoo is technically led by two bodies -- the Council and the Trustees.
While this somewhat works for many years, people have repeatedly pointed
out that it's far from perfect and that it is preventing Gentoo from
gaining more popularity.  Some of them are looking into the times of
BDFL with longing, others are considering it the worst thing ever. 
Nevertheless, there are problems with the current state of things.

Firstly, we have two leading bodies and still no clear distinction
between their roles.  Some developers agree on split being here, some
developers put it elsewhere but in the end, nothing has been really
decided.  From time to time one of the bodies tries to push their border
forward, then backs down and we're back where we started.

Secondly, for historical reasons the both bodies are elected by two
electorates that only partially overlap.  Surely, today the overlap is
reasonable but is there any real reason for different people to elect
both bodies?  In the end, it is entirely possible for one body to
arbitrarily change their electorate and made it completely disjoint.

Thirdly, large governing bodies don't really work.  Instead of having
one consistent vision of Gentoo, we have 12.  What we get is a semi-
random combination of parts of their visions that just happened to hit
majority in their votes.  It gets absurd to the point that a body can
make half-way decisions just because first half passed vote
and the second didn't (remember closing -dev but leaving -project
open?).

Compromises are sometimes good and sometimes horrible.  If one dev wants
to paint the bikeshed red and another one blue, mixings the two colors
doesn't really get either what he wants.  You just get a third color
that nobody is happy with, and in the best case you could say that
neither of them got what he wanted.


BDFL is not a perfect solution either.  While having one has the obvious
advantage of having a single consistent vision for the distribution,
giving absolute power to a single person creates a fair risk of abuse. 
This is not something most of Gentoo devs would agree to.


All that said, I'd propose to meet in the middle -- following
the ancient tradition, establish a triumvirate in Gentoo.  It would be:

1. Technical lead -- a person with exceptional technical talents that
would build the vision of Gentoo from technical perspective, i.e. make
a distribution that people would love using.  Initially, this role could
be taken by the QA lead.

2. Social lead -- a person with exceptional social skills that would
build the vision of Gentoo from community perspective, i.e. make
a distribution that people would love contributing to.  Initially, this
role would taken by the ComRel lead.

3. Organization lead -- a person with (exceptional) business skills that
would take care of all the financial and organizational aspects of
Gentoo, i.e. make a distribution that sustains.  Initially, this role
would be taken by the Foundation president.

Three seems to be a very good number -- on one hand, it's more than one,
so the others can stop any single one from getting absolute power.
On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to actively work
together and directly establish a common set of goals (i.e. via
an agreement rather than a majority vote).


WDYT?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier]

[2020-06-04 09:15:37+0200] Michał Górny:
> All that said, I'd propose to meet in the middle -- following
> the ancient tradition, establish a triumvirate in Gentoo.  It would be:
> 
> 1. Technical lead -- a person with exceptional technical talents that
> would build the vision of Gentoo from technical perspective, i.e. make
> a distribution that people would love using.  Initially, this role could
> be taken by the QA lead.
> 
> 2. Social lead -- a person with exceptional social skills that would
> build the vision of Gentoo from community perspective, i.e. make
> a distribution that people would love contributing to.  Initially, this
> role would taken by the ComRel lead.
> 
> 3. Organization lead -- a person with (exceptional) business skills that
> would take care of all the financial and organizational aspects of
> Gentoo, i.e. make a distribution that sustains.  Initially, this role
> would be taken by the Foundation president.
> 
> Three seems to be a very good number -- on one hand, it's more than one,
> so the others can stop any single one from getting absolute power.
> On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to actively work
> together and directly establish a common set of goals (i.e. via
> an agreement rather than a majority vote).
> 
> 
> WDYT?

Sounds quite interesting, would they also have elections like other 
bodies in gentoo?
This way we do not end up with three dictators / immortals.

And I think there should maybe be two per lead, it's still very easy 
to reach consensus at 6 but it avoids getting to single-handed decisions,
specially when something only actually concerns one viewpoint/skill.

Best regards,

Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Michał Górny]

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On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 14:41 +0200, Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier wrote:
> [2020-06-04 09:15:37+0200] Michał Górny:
> > All that said, I'd propose to meet in the middle -- following
> > the ancient tradition, establish a triumvirate in Gentoo.  It would be:
> > 
> > 1. Technical lead -- a person with exceptional technical talents that
> > would build the vision of Gentoo from technical perspective, i.e. make
> > a distribution that people would love using.  Initially, this role could
> > be taken by the QA lead.
> > 
> > 2. Social lead -- a person with exceptional social skills that would
> > build the vision of Gentoo from community perspective, i.e. make
> > a distribution that people would love contributing to.  Initially, this
> > role would taken by the ComRel lead.
> > 
> > 3. Organization lead -- a person with (exceptional) business skills that
> > would take care of all the financial and organizational aspects of
> > Gentoo, i.e. make a distribution that sustains.  Initially, this role
> > would be taken by the Foundation president.
> > 
> > Three seems to be a very good number -- on one hand, it's more than one,
> > so the others can stop any single one from getting absolute power.
> > On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to actively work
> > together and directly establish a common set of goals (i.e. via
> > an agreement rather than a majority vote).
> > 
> > 
> > WDYT?
> 
> Sounds quite interesting, would they also have elections like other 
> bodies in gentoo?
> This way we do not end up with three dictators / immortals.

Some kind of elections, yes.  Not sure how yet, and I'd rather discuss
that separately later in order not to diverge too much from the idea
itself.

> And I think there should maybe be two per lead, it's still very easy 
> to reach consensus at 6 but it avoids getting to single-handed decisions,
> specially when something only actually concerns one viewpoint/skill.

The whole point is that we want 'single-handed decisions'.  Of course,
that doesn't mean arbitrary decisions.  There could be a whole lot of
advisors that influence the final decisions but there should be just one
person combining them into something consistent.

I don't think there really are any decisions concerning one triumvir
here.  Surely, they have their distinct areas but every decision affects
the others as well to some degree.  Even if this means saying 'I do not
mind this'.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 3:15 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> 1. Technical lead -- a person with exceptional technical talents that
> would build the vision of Gentoo from technical perspective, i.e. make
> a distribution that people would love using.  Initially, this role could
> be taken by the QA lead.
>
> 2. Social lead -- a person with exceptional social skills that would
> build the vision of Gentoo from community perspective, i.e. make
> a distribution that people would love contributing to.  Initially, this
> role would taken by the ComRel lead.
>
> 3. Organization lead -- a person with (exceptional) business skills that
> would take care of all the financial and organizational aspects of
> Gentoo, i.e. make a distribution that sustains.  Initially, this role
> would be taken by the Foundation president.
>

A few thoughts:

1.  There may be some legal challenges with the Foundation around
this, but I don't want to elaborate on this.  Many are obvious.

2.  If the goal is to ultimately elect these, I would just have the
election vs having them initially be some particular lead.  However, I
think what you say is still useful in terms of thinking of the sort of
role.  The problem is none of these leads are popularly elected today
and were never intended to unilaterally run the org, so an initial
election probably makes sense.

3.  Do all decisions require a majority of the 3, or will these
individuals have their own scope?  Will a new technical GLEP just be
approved by the "tech lead" or all three?  Could the two non-tech
leads override the tech lead on a tech decision?  Obviously the goal
is collaboration but presumably you want this to solve situations
where collaboration already fails.  I won't go on forever but I could
see challenges either way.

4.  How does accountability work?  Are we going to get volunteers who
are going to be competent and accept singular accountability without
compensation?  We struggle to fill Trustee slots and their
responsibilities are somewhat nebulous/dilute.  Will somebody
competent want to be singularly responsible for all fiscal problems
without compensation?  Don't get me wrong - singular accountability
works well in practice but usually these roles are well-compensated.
I could see this being a bigger problem with the org lead role.

5.  I could see a lot of bleed-over.  If you want to stack the
leadership with pro/anti-emacs members, why would you limit that to
only the technical role?  Obviously I'm more concerned with more
timely issues but we all know of a bunch of hot-button topics where
top-down control can be used to push an agenda.  So you could end up
with an org lead who cares little about the financials simply because
they have the right position on the hot topic of the day.  Today these
jobs are more delegated so that the elected board can represent the
community but delegate the actual work to people who are more focused
on the actual work.  Sure, you could blame the voters for this sort of
problem, but we already know how people tend to vote so we're not
entirely blame-free if we set it up this way...

Not really meant to suggest that this doesn't have merit, because I
think it does have a lot of merit.  This is more food for thought...

-- 
Rich


-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Joonas Niilola]

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On 6/4/20 4:12 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>
> 3.  Do all decisions require a majority of the 3, or will these
> individuals have their own scope?  Will a new technical GLEP just be
> approved by the "tech lead" or all three?  Could the two non-tech
> leads override the tech lead on a tech decision?  Obviously the goal
> is collaboration but presumably you want this to solve situations
> where collaboration already fails. 


What will be council's role/fate after triumvirate?

-- juippis



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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Brian Dolbec]

On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 16:16:22 +0300
Joonas Niilola <juippis@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 6/4/20 4:12 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> >
> > 3.  Do all decisions require a majority of the 3, or will these
> > individuals have their own scope?  Will a new technical GLEP just be
> > approved by the "tech lead" or all three?  Could the two non-tech
> > leads override the tech lead on a tech decision?  Obviously the goal
> > is collaboration but presumably you want this to solve situations
> > where collaboration already fails.   
> 
> 
> What will be council's role/fate after triumvirate?
> 
> -- juippis
> 
> 

They won't exist.  Neither will the foundation if I understood it right.

Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Michał Górny]

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On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 09:12 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 3:15 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > 1. Technical lead -- a person with exceptional technical talents that
> > would build the vision of Gentoo from technical perspective, i.e. make
> > a distribution that people would love using.  Initially, this role could
> > be taken by the QA lead.
> > 
> > 2. Social lead -- a person with exceptional social skills that would
> > build the vision of Gentoo from community perspective, i.e. make
> > a distribution that people would love contributing to.  Initially, this
> > role would taken by the ComRel lead.
> > 
> > 3. Organization lead -- a person with (exceptional) business skills that
> > would take care of all the financial and organizational aspects of
> > Gentoo, i.e. make a distribution that sustains.  Initially, this role
> > would be taken by the Foundation president.
> > 
> 
> A few thoughts:
> 
> 1.  There may be some legal challenges with the Foundation around
> this, but I don't want to elaborate on this.  Many are obvious.

I don't want to shoot it down entirely because we're bound
to the Foundation that some of the Trustees were promising to disband
for years.  For now, let's assume it doesn't necessarily exist,
and the organization triumvir is the person interacting with Foundation
or any other legal body.


> 3.  Do all decisions require a majority of the 3, or will these
> individuals have their own scope?  Will a new technical GLEP just be
> approved by the "tech lead" or all three?  Could the two non-tech
> leads override the tech lead on a tech decision?  Obviously the goal
> is collaboration but presumably you want this to solve situations
> where collaboration already fails.  I won't go on forever but I could
> see challenges either way.

I dare say that one of them can make decisions if the two other don't
object to them.  So it's mostly a matter of establishing an agreement
between the three whether they want to get involved every time,
or approve deferring specific kind of decisions to one of them.

In either case, I honestly doubt that having to wait for two others to
step in would be worse than the current status quo of waiting up to
a month for Council to meet and decide, possibly reading the proposals
last minute and not even having time to provide feedback without
deferring it further.

> 4.  How does accountability work?  Are we going to get volunteers who
> are going to be competent and accept singular accountability without
> compensation?  We struggle to fill Trustee slots and their
> responsibilities are somewhat nebulous/dilute.  Will somebody
> competent want to be singularly responsible for all fiscal problems
> without compensation?  Don't get me wrong - singular accountability
> works well in practice but usually these roles are well-compensated.
> I could see this being a bigger problem with the org lead role.

I don't think we can know unless we see.  It much depends on what
happens with the Foundation -- it may continue existing with lead org
being responsible for interacting with it, or be replaced by another org
with org lead being responsible for communicating with them.

> 5.  I could see a lot of bleed-over.  If you want to stack the
> leadership with pro/anti-emacs members, why would you limit that to
> only the technical role?  Obviously I'm more concerned with more
> timely issues but we all know of a bunch of hot-button topics where
> top-down control can be used to push an agenda.  So you could end up
> with an org lead who cares little about the financials simply because
> they have the right position on the hot topic of the day.  Today these
> jobs are more delegated so that the elected board can represent the
> community but delegate the actual work to people who are more focused
> on the actual work.  Sure, you could blame the voters for this sort of
> problem, but we already know how people tend to vote so we're not
> entirely blame-free if we set it up this way...
> 

I don't really understand why you assume that such a thing would happen.
Did we ever really have someone *that* unprofessional on the Council or
Trustees to push puny personal agenda over the best interest
of the distribution?  I don't see any possible change here.  The same
problem can happen whether we're talking of 1, 3, 7 or 12 people
in charge.  Well, you could even argue that the latter is even more
possible because the responsibility is diluted, while if there's just
one responsible person, then the full blame goes to that person.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Michał Górny]

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On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 08:01 -0700, Brian Dolbec wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 16:16:22 +0300
> Joonas Niilola <juippis@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > On 6/4/20 4:12 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > > 3.  Do all decisions require a majority of the 3, or will these
> > > individuals have their own scope?  Will a new technical GLEP just be
> > > approved by the "tech lead" or all three?  Could the two non-tech
> > > leads override the tech lead on a tech decision?  Obviously the goal
> > > is collaboration but presumably you want this to solve situations
> > > where collaboration already fails.   
> > 
> > What will be council's role/fate after triumvirate?
> > 
> > -- juippis
> > 
> > 
> 
> They won't exist.  Neither will the foundation if I understood it right.

Exactly.  Council is being replaced directly, and Trustees if possible
at the given point in time.  If they can't disappear entirely, we can
just set org lead to provide a bridge to Trustees.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Rich Freeman]

(Keep in mind that these aren't intended as "hard" objections - just
trying to flesh this out a bit.)

On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 11:19 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 09:12 -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 3:15 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >
> > 3.  Do all decisions require a majority of the 3, or will these
> > individuals have their own scope?  Will a new technical GLEP just be
> > approved by the "tech lead" or all three?  Could the two non-tech
> > leads override the tech lead on a tech decision?  Obviously the goal
> > is collaboration but presumably you want this to solve situations
> > where collaboration already fails.  I won't go on forever but I could
> > see challenges either way.
>
> I dare say that one of them can make decisions if the two other don't
> object to them.  So it's mostly a matter of establishing an agreement
> between the three whether they want to get involved every time,
> or approve deferring specific kind of decisions to one of them.
>

Ok.  I agree that this is how this would normally work, but if there
is disagreement it is 2/3 majority rules.

I'll get to intentional game-playing at the end, but let's assume a
completely innocent scenario.

Imagine Joe is great with financials and has interest in the org lead
role, and there isn't much other interest in the job.  The community
is happy with his work in the org lead role.  However, due to the fact
that delegation to the tech lead is only by mutual agreement, Joe ends
up having a bit of an extra influence on the tech side of the distro
even though nobody really wants him in that role.  If nothing else he
has way more of a voice in the leadership team than an average
dev/etc.

You could argue that this is a feature or a bug depending on your
perspective.  Joe is putting in a lot of work, so maybe a bit of extra
bikeshedding should be a perk.  On the other hand, why should Joe be
allowed that role?  And of course Joe and the people lead might think
we're about to make a really stupid tech decision and override the
tech lead.

Not suggesting this is a show-stopper - just something to consider.

> > 5.  I could see a lot of bleed-over.  If you want to stack the
> > leadership with pro/anti-emacs members, why would you limit that to
> > only the technical role?  Obviously I'm more concerned with more
> > timely issues but we all know of a bunch of hot-button topics where
> > top-down control can be used to push an agenda.  So you could end up
> > with an org lead who cares little about the financials simply because
> > they have the right position on the hot topic of the day.  Today these
> > jobs are more delegated so that the elected board can represent the
> > community but delegate the actual work to people who are more focused
> > on the actual work.  Sure, you could blame the voters for this sort of
> > problem, but we already know how people tend to vote so we're not
> > entirely blame-free if we set it up this way...
> >
>
> I don't really understand why you assume that such a thing would happen.
> Did we ever really have someone *that* unprofessional on the Council or
> Trustees to push puny personal agenda over the best interest
> of the distribution?  I don't see any possible change here.  The same
> problem can happen whether we're talking of 1, 3, 7 or 12 people
> in charge.  Well, you could even argue that the latter is even more
> possible because the responsibility is diluted, while if there's just
> one responsible person, then the full blame goes to that person.

I'm just thinking about human nature here.  Maybe it is concerning
systemd.  Or maybe it is concerning the Code of Conduct or Social
Contract.  There are always going to be contentious issues that are
often only semi-technical in nature and you can't always solve it with
a USE flag.

One of the differences today is that we separate the role of SME from
the role of decider.  You can have a board that is just focused on
direction and overall policy/strategy, but they aren't the ones
leading QA.  You can have a board of directors who oversees
everything, but they can appoint a Treasurer.  Campaigns for
Council/Trustees in the past certainly have touched on ideological
issues (role of comrel/CoC and level of enforcement, Foundation vs
umbrella, etc).

In this model the decider is more of an SME.  It is more of a
technocracy.  The problem is that how do you vote to support having an
umbrella org if the most competent person to actually make sure the
taxes get filed wants us to run our own Foundation?  There is less
separation of policymaking from execution this way.

I think the result is that ideology will still end up dominating, and
instead of the most competent SME for tech/people/org you end up with
3 people who have the views everybody likes the most who will just
appoint other people do do the tech/people/org, which basically makes
it no different from what we have now.  I'd argue that instead of 3
separate elections it might be better to just have one election and
take the top 3 that way, and not give them titles - it just turns into
a combined Council/Trustees of 3.

The problem with having 3 separate elections is the
first-past-the-post issue: if 55% of the community is pro-systemd you
end up with 3 pro-systemd candidates, instead of maybe more of a
diverse mix with a majority in one direction.

In an ideal world I agree that this wouldn't be a problem, but I'm
just thinking about human nature here.  And I'm not saying people are
even being greedy - they just want to see their viewpoints
represented.

In this sense, the disagreement across Council/Trustee members maybe
should be seen as more of a feature and less of a bug.  Sure,
decisions would be easier if they all agreed, but that also means that
decisions would be easier even if 40% of the community strongly
disagreed with them.  That spirit of independence in these bodies
largely reflects the attitude of the Gentoo community as a whole.

Again, this isn't meant to be some argument that we absolutely
shouldn't do it this way.  My intent here is to raise some things to
think about.  There are some cons that go with the pros, and we should
just be aware of them.  I'm not saying they all have to be mitigated
in the design, though when straightforward to do so maybe some could
be.

-- 
Rich

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Adam Feldman]

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On 6/4/20 3:15 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
> 
> Three seems to be a very good number -- on one hand, it's more than one,
> so the others can stop any single one from getting absolute power.
> On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to actively work
> together and directly establish a common set of goals (i.e. via
> an agreement rather than a majority vote).
> 
> 
> WDYT?
> 

Hard no from me.

If several developers band together in the current system, while some
sort of regulatory capture can be achieved, it's limited by the fact
that the regulatory bodies are large enough, and there are several of
them, such that numbers prevent a hostile takeover.

This proposal reduces the number to 3 individuals.  Last thing this
distro needs is 3 close buddies taking over all 3 positions, not
providing and check or balance against one another and having complete
and utter control.

-- 
Thanks,

Adam Feldman
Gentoo Developer
NP-Hardass@gentoo.org
0x671C52F118F89C67


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 09:15:37AM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hello, everyone.
> 
> Gentoo is technically led by two bodies -- the Council and the Trustees.
> While this somewhat works for many years, people have repeatedly pointed
> out that it's far from perfect and that it is preventing Gentoo from
> gaining more popularity.  Some of them are looking into the times of
> BDFL with longing, others are considering it the worst thing ever. 
> Nevertheless, there are problems with the current state of things.
>

I do not recall any discussions on how the current model is impacting
popularity of the distro. I am not asking for evidence, but if this is
purely based around previous "power struggles" then I would agree.

> Firstly, we have two leading bodies and still no clear distinction
> between their roles.  Some developers agree on split being here, some
> developers put it elsewhere but in the end, nothing has been really
> decided.  From time to time one of the bodies tries to push their border
> forward, then backs down and we're back where we started.
> 

There have been struggles that I recall in the past with the foundation
attempting to over step it's bounds. As others have mentioned, this is
inevitable regardless of structure barring any BDFL like scenarios.

I have postulated that the current structure works and there are avenues
to codify distinct roles in the "two bodies." This can be done in the
by-laws.

Ultimately, the council runs the distro and the foundation ensures that
the distro is supported financially and legally. Pure and simple. The
Foundation has no play in technical matters or determining how the
council is to govern the distro (OFC, unless something bleeds over into
legal matters).

I am not speaking for Robin here, but I completely agree with his
approach for how infra interacts with the various entities within
Gentoo. This same "due diligence", based on role, is imperative for all to
understand regardless of personal opinion.

> Secondly, for historical reasons the both bodies are elected by two
> electorates that only partially overlap.  Surely, today the overlap is
> reasonable but is there any real reason for different people to elect
> both bodies?  In the end, it is entirely possible for one body to
> arbitrarily change their electorate and made it completely disjoint.
> 

This definitely must be fixed. I believe a decision to determine the
electorate should be made and it must be the same.

> Thirdly, large governing bodies don't really work.  Instead of having
> one consistent vision of Gentoo, we have 12.  What we get is a semi-
> random combination of parts of their visions that just happened to hit
> majority in their votes.  It gets absurd to the point that a body can
> make half-way decisions just because first half passed vote
> and the second didn't (remember closing -dev but leaving -project
> open?).
>

Assuming roles are clearly defined, I believe this point becomes moot.
Someone should own the ML's from a governing perspective.

> On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to actively work
> together and directly establish a common set of goals (i.e. via
> an agreement rather than a majority vote).
> 
>

Agree with others that this lowers the bar even more for a possible
takeover.

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Michał Górny]

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On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 15:01 -0400, Aaron Bauman wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 09:15:37AM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> > Hello, everyone.
> > 
> > Gentoo is technically led by two bodies -- the Council and the Trustees.
> > While this somewhat works for many years, people have repeatedly pointed
> > out that it's far from perfect and that it is preventing Gentoo from
> > gaining more popularity.  Some of them are looking into the times of
> > BDFL with longing, others are considering it the worst thing ever. 
> > Nevertheless, there are problems with the current state of things.
> > 
> 
> I do not recall any discussions on how the current model is impacting
> popularity of the distro. I am not asking for evidence, but if this is
> purely based around previous "power struggles" then I would agree.
> 
> > Firstly, we have two leading bodies and still no clear distinction
> > between their roles.  Some developers agree on split being here, some
> > developers put it elsewhere but in the end, nothing has been really
> > decided.  From time to time one of the bodies tries to push their border
> > forward, then backs down and we're back where we started.
> > 
> 
> There have been struggles that I recall in the past with the foundation
> attempting to over step it's bounds. As others have mentioned, this is
> inevitable regardless of structure barring any BDFL like scenarios.
> 
> I have postulated that the current structure works and there are avenues
> to codify distinct roles in the "two bodies." This can be done in the
> by-laws.

The problem with the bylaws is that the Trustees control them,
and aren't interested in doing anything that would actively limit their
claimed power.  I mean, they've even rejected clarifying the 'Trustees
can kick Foundation members at their leisure' rule.


-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Michał Górny]

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On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 13:32 -0400, Adam Feldman wrote:
> On 6/4/20 3:15 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
> > Three seems to be a very good number -- on one hand, it's more than one,
> > so the others can stop any single one from getting absolute power.
> > On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to actively work
> > together and directly establish a common set of goals (i.e. via
> > an agreement rather than a majority vote).
> > 
> > 
> > WDYT?
> > 
> 
> Hard no from me.
> 
> If several developers band together in the current system, while some
> sort of regulatory capture can be achieved, it's limited by the fact
> that the regulatory bodies are large enough, and there are several of
> them, such that numbers prevent a hostile takeover.
> 
> This proposal reduces the number to 3 individuals.  Last thing this
> distro needs is 3 close buddies taking over all 3 positions, not
> providing and check or balance against one another and having complete
> and utter control.
> 

I don't really understand your negativity.  You seem to assume that
everyone in the distributions means harm to it.  Why don't you have more
trust in your colleagues?  Don't you think they mean the best for Gentoo
and are not really interested in 'hostile takeovers'?  (I mean, how
could you even consider a 'hostile' takeover when we're all Gentoo
devs?)

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 09:47:31PM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 15:01 -0400, Aaron Bauman wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 09:15:37AM +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> > > Hello, everyone.
> > > 
> > > Gentoo is technically led by two bodies -- the Council and the Trustees.
> > > While this somewhat works for many years, people have repeatedly pointed
> > > out that it's far from perfect and that it is preventing Gentoo from
> > > gaining more popularity.  Some of them are looking into the times of
> > > BDFL with longing, others are considering it the worst thing ever. 
> > > Nevertheless, there are problems with the current state of things.
> > > 
> > 
> The problem with the bylaws is that the Trustees control them,
> and aren't interested in doing anything that would actively limit their
> claimed power.  I mean, they've even rejected clarifying the 'Trustees
> can kick Foundation members at their leisure' rule.
>

No, the trustees do not exclusively control the by-laws. Even the
foundation has checks and balances. The same approach of the general
resolution for the council is in place within the foundation.

What is it that needs clarified regarding Section 5.6?

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Adam Feldman]

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On 6/4/20 3:49 PM, Michał Górny wrote:
> On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 13:32 -0400, Adam Feldman wrote:
>> On 6/4/20 3:15 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
>>> Three seems to be a very good number -- on one hand, it's more than one,
>>> so the others can stop any single one from getting absolute power.
>>> On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to actively work
>>> together and directly establish a common set of goals (i.e. via
>>> an agreement rather than a majority vote).
>>>
>>>
>>> WDYT?
>>>
>>
>> Hard no from me.
>>
>> If several developers band together in the current system, while some
>> sort of regulatory capture can be achieved, it's limited by the fact
>> that the regulatory bodies are large enough, and there are several of
>> them, such that numbers prevent a hostile takeover.
>>
>> This proposal reduces the number to 3 individuals.  Last thing this
>> distro needs is 3 close buddies taking over all 3 positions, not
>> providing and check or balance against one another and having complete
>> and utter control.
>>
> 
> I don't really understand your negativity.  You seem to assume that
> everyone in the distributions means harm to it.  Why don't you have more
> trust in your colleagues?  Don't you think they mean the best for Gentoo
> and are not really interested in 'hostile takeovers'?  (I mean, how
> could you even consider a 'hostile' takeover when we're all Gentoo
> devs?)
> 

Not at all.  Just consider a simple situation... There are your
triumvirate members, A, B, and C.  And they really don't like dev D.
There is nothing to stop them from sanctioning, kicking, or otherwise
negatively affecting dev D.

At least in the current system, we have a Council of 7 individuals, QA
team of 5, ComRel team of 9, and Foundation of 7.  That provides a lot
of potential for a variety of individuals to be involved, and stops any
particular individual or group from being overly power.  Let's say
Undertakers (2 individuals) or Recruiting (2 individuals) started acting
against individuals... Maybe the two people in undertakers really
dislike someone and want to get rid of them.  Or the two in recruiters
seem to not be giving someone a fair chance to join... Would you rather
have have 7 Council Members and 9 ComRel members take your appeal?  Or
1-3 members of the triumvirate?  What if the Triumvirate consists of the
same individuals as the group acting against you... You have no recourse
against single individuals.   Moreover, in another email, you lamented
that the Trustees had the power to remove Foundation members...  Can you
imagine if there was only one person accountable for whether people
would get removed or not? Vs several individuals who should come to
consensus? It's clear that in the event of some negative interaction
(inevitable) that things are safer with groups than individuals in charge.

And your assertions as to what I meant read way more into things.  I
assume everyone means harm to it? Of course not.  I don't have trust in
my colleagues and think their goals are hostile takeovers?  Come on.
Take it back a notch, please.

I just don't think that consolidating power into minimal numbers of
people is beneficial.  It's obvious, and a given that not everyone gets
along with one another.  Would you rather leave your fate to 7-9 people?
Or 1? It's really not hard to imagine that interpersonal disagreements
have the potential for abuse when power is consolidated.  Am I wrong? Or
was GLEP 39 passed to democratize Gentoo and reduce episodes of
interpersonal conflict that existed before?  Personally, I don't see the
logic in reverting that.  What if the new Technical Lead decides that
your way of doing things isn't beneficial to Gentoo, and instead of
having several competing projects leading to the best solution, we end
up with some particular one with people unable to work on what they want to?


If your goal is merely to speed up the rate that issues are resolved by
any particular body, why not instead come up with ways to streamline the
way that those bodies function?  Your concern is that ComRel needs to
come together to a vote for things?  Empower the individual members to
take action, and then if that doesn't adequately resolve things, then it
goes to the whole body for review.  You want better community relations?
 Fine, start a new project, sanctioned by the council and foundation and
do it.  You want the Council to act more expeditiously on technical
matters?  Why don't we come up with some mechanism of causing that to
happen... But I do not think that consolidating power to an individual
is safe, considering the potential for conflict and the fact that it is
regression from GLEP 39 and all it stands for.

-- 
Thanks,

Adam Feldman
Gentoo Developer
NP-Hardass@gentoo.org
0x671C52F118F89C67


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Alec Warner]

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On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 12:30 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Hello, everyone.
>
> This is something I wanted to discuss back in April but due to the peak
> of covid pandemic I've delayed it.  Today things seem to be improving
> a bit, at least in Europe, so I'd like to bring it up now, especially
> with the elections coming soon.
>
>
> Gentoo is technically led by two bodies -- the Council and the Trustees.
> While this somewhat works for many years, people have repeatedly pointed
> out that it's far from perfect and that it is preventing Gentoo from
> gaining more popularity.  Some of them are looking into the times of
> BDFL with longing, others are considering it the worst thing ever.
> Nevertheless, there are problems with the current state of things.
>
>
Is Gentoo being popular a goal? How does the current structure prevent
anything?

I think the existing leadership is not very proactive (in both bodies.)
Often the leadership is focussed on adjudication (someone raises an issue,
leaders consider and issue a judgement, issue is resolved / shelved.) I
don't see either body putting forth a vision for Gentoo, nor leading in
what I'd expect would be a more top-down fashion (perhaps necessary to
implement any vision.) I'm curious to hear more about this; is this lack of
vision a lack of remit? Or is it just too hard? Or no one is interested in
a vision?


> Firstly, we have two leading bodies and still no clear distinction
> between their roles.  Some developers agree on split being here, some
> developers put it elsewhere but in the end, nothing has been really
> decided.  From time to time one of the bodies tries to push their border
> forward, then backs down and we're back where we started.
>
> Secondly, for historical reasons the both bodies are elected by two
> electorates that only partially overlap.  Surely, today the overlap is
> reasonable but is there any real reason for different people to elect
> both bodies?  In the end, it is entirely possible for one body to
> arbitrarily change their electorate and made it completely disjoint.
>
> Thirdly, large governing bodies don't really work.  Instead of having
> one consistent vision of Gentoo, we have 12.  What we get is a semi-
> random combination of parts of their visions that just happened to hit
> majority in their votes.  It gets absurd to the point that a body can
> make half-way decisions just because first half passed vote
> and the second didn't (remember closing -dev but leaving -project
> open?).
>

I seem to recall that decision being undone by a later council, so I think
the right thing happened in the end ;)


> Compromises are sometimes good and sometimes horrible.  If one dev wants
> to paint the bikeshed red and another one blue, mixings the two colors
> doesn't really get either what he wants.  You just get a third color
> that nobody is happy with, and in the best case you could say that
> neither of them got what he wanted.
>

"A really good compromise is the one that leaves both sides equally
dissatisfied." (see below)


>
> BDFL is not a perfect solution either.  While having one has the obvious
> advantage of having a single consistent vision for the distribution,
> giving absolute power to a single person creates a fair risk of abuse.
> This is not something most of Gentoo devs would agree to.
>

I don't think a BFDL is a necessary condition for a vision. Let's have a
hypothetical where in the existing system someone proposes a broad vision
for Gentoo and its ratified by all leadership bodies. What effect might
that have on developers whose work is not compatible? Would they no longer
contribute; and is that a thing that we want? Part of the benefit of the
compromise model is that you compromise because both sides have something
to offer and you want to come to some mutually beneficial arrangement.
Typically in Gentoo it means we have fairly loose development to facilitate
a broad base of developers. If we tighten up our development process we may
lose people who are not on board (because the compromise is no longer
facilitating their contributions.)


>
>
> All that said, I'd propose to meet in the middle -- following
> the ancient tradition, establish a triumvirate in Gentoo.  It would be:
>
> 1. Technical lead -- a person with exceptional technical talents that
> would build the vision of Gentoo from technical perspective, i.e. make
> a distribution that people would love using.  Initially, this role could
> be taken by the QA lead.
>
> 2. Social lead -- a person with exceptional social skills that would
> build the vision of Gentoo from community perspective, i.e. make
> a distribution that people would love contributing to.  Initially, this
> role would taken by the ComRel lead.
>
> 3. Organization lead -- a person with (exceptional) business skills that
> would take care of all the financial and organizational aspects of
> Gentoo, i.e. make a distribution that sustains.  Initially, this role
> would be taken by the Foundation president.
>
> Three seems to be a very good number -- on one hand, it's more than one,
> so the others can stop any single one from getting absolute power.
> On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to actively work
> together and directly establish a common set of goals (i.e. via
> an agreement rather than a majority vote).
>

I think you still need that 3 member triumvirate to practice a *lot* of
delegation in order to lead a 100+ person project. This is something we
could do a lot better at.

-A


>
>
> WDYT?
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Michał Górny]

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Hi, everyone.

On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 09:15 +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> This is something I wanted to discuss back in April but due to the peak
> of covid pandemic I've delayed it.  Today things seem to be improving
> a bit, at least in Europe, so I'd like to bring it up now, especially
> with the elections coming soon.

By this paragraph I meant it's a rescheduled April Fool Day's.  I'm
sorry to everyone who took this seriously and lost their time and/or
nerve over this.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Fri, 05 Jun 2020, Michał Górny wrote:

> On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 09:15 +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
>> This is something I wanted to discuss back in April but due to the peak
>> of covid pandemic I've delayed it.  Today things seem to be improving
>> a bit, at least in Europe, so I'd like to bring it up now, especially
>> with the elections coming soon.

> By this paragraph I meant it's a rescheduled April Fool Day's.  I'm
> sorry to everyone who took this seriously and lost their time and/or
> nerve over this.

So, no proscription lists [1] for Council members and Trustees?
I'm relieved. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proscription#Proscription_of_43_BC

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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Stefan Strogin]

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On 05/06/2020 08:16, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hi, everyone.
> 
> On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 09:15 +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
>> This is something I wanted to discuss back in April but due to the peak
>> of covid pandemic I've delayed it.  Today things seem to be improving
>> a bit, at least in Europe, so I'd like to bring it up now, especially
>> with the elections coming soon.
> 
> By this paragraph I meant it's a rescheduled April Fool Day's.  I'm
> sorry to everyone who took this seriously and lost their time and/or
> nerve over this.
> 

I think such an "RFC" has devalued and discredited all possible talks about
instituting anything BDFL-like in Gentoo in the future.
And that's good. Thanks.


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Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Triumvirate in Gentoo

[Lars Wendler]

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On Thu, 4 Jun 2020 13:32:08 -0400 Adam Feldman wrote:

>On 6/4/20 3:15 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
>> 
>> Three seems to be a very good number -- on one hand, it's more than
>> one, so the others can stop any single one from getting absolute
>> power. On the other, it's small enough for them to be able to
>> actively work together and directly establish a common set of goals
>> (i.e. via an agreement rather than a majority vote).
>> 
>> 
>> WDYT?
>> 
>
>Hard no from me.
>
>If several developers band together in the current system, while some
>sort of regulatory capture can be achieved, it's limited by the fact
>that the regulatory bodies are large enough, and there are several of
>them, such that numbers prevent a hostile takeover.
>
>This proposal reduces the number to 3 individuals.  Last thing this
>distro needs is 3 close buddies taking over all 3 positions, not
>providing and check or balance against one another and having complete
>and utter control.
>

I am against this idea for the very same reasons.

Kind regards
Lars

-- 
Lars Wendler
Gentoo package maintainer
GPG: 21CC CF02 4586 0A07 ED93  9F68 498F E765 960E 9B39

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