Re: [gentoo-dev] Changes in Developer Relations and log of devrel meeting

[Ferris McCormick]

On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 15:39 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Oct 2006 07:12:56 -0700 Josh Saddler <nightmorph@g.o>
> wrote:
> | > Uh, read again. You missed the point. I'm not talking about the
> | > logged meetings here. I'm talking about the goings on in a certain
> | > private IRC channel.
> |
> | You're just pissy because you weren't invited to the party.
>
> Naah. As anyone in devrel will tell you, someone forwards me complete
> logs of the private devrel IRC channel, all the email sent to the alias
> and spycam footage of their orgies.
>
> Seriously though, devrel keeping things private probably isn't a good
> idea even if they're not using said private things to plot behind
> people's backs any more. Given that they've done it in the past, it
> only lends credibility to people who're claiming that devrel are out to
> get them for personal reasons...
>

A very few discussions must be private:  Consider that except for some
documentation and policy, our only "product" is developers and the
interactions among them, really.  Now, if we were of one mind, there
would be no problem, but we are not --- we are individuals with
individual approaches and philosophies (even the log which triggered
this thread might give some indications of that).  Like it or not, this
means that some discussions can include references to people which
usually are not intended (the references; we can't speak to the history
of the people), but in public might be injurious.  Obviously I am not
going to elaborate, but you can probably imagine situations which can
set off such discussions.

Now, that said, we (devrel) agree that we do too much in private, and
believe it or not, we try to avoid it (I think the log contains some
mention of this, too).  So with the one (small, actually) exception
outlined at length above, I think devrel pretty much agrees with
ciaranm's observation; I believe it is our (informal) policy to work in
public with -private as the exception.  This doesn't mean we always
observe said "policy", but we are aware of the issues.  For example, I
refer you to ribosome's observation in the log at 20:57 and kloeri's
followup at 20:57 -- 58.

I should emphasize that I am speaking as an individual member of devrel,
I am giving my own spin on things, and I do NOT speak here for devrel as
a whole.

Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc)