Gentoo Archives: gentoo-devrel

From: Mike Doty <kingtaco@g.o>
To: gentoo-devrel@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-devrel] devrel meeting etc
Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2005 04:16:33
Message-Id: 431E699D.6040200@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-devrel] devrel meeting etc by Deedra Waters
1 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
2 Hash: SHA1
3
4 Deedra Waters wrote:
5 | All,
6 |
7 | Most of you if not all know why i've been so absent over the past
8 | several weeks. Now that things are settling back down, I want to revisit
9 | the old topic of how devrel handles complaints etc. I've got 1 major
10 | change that i would like to make to the devrel policy for how complaints
11 | are handled.
12 | A lot of people have told me after the fact that having seperate
13 | judicial and investigative branches make things too complicated and the
14 | end result is too much red tape. Some disagree and think that things
15 | won't/aren't too complicated.
16 |
17 | Here's what i want to do.
18 |
19 | Basically, for the most part, the transparency of how complaints are
20 | handled stays the same. The only thing i really want to change, is that
21 | i think that a commitee of say 3 to 5 people handles a complaint from
22 | beginning to end. Basically, i think that this is much simpler, and the
23 | devrel members i've mentioned it to seem to like this idea. The big
24 | thing for most people is that what ever happens, the transparency needs
25 | to stay, and i completely agree there.
26 |
27 | So, 1. I'd like to see some discussion over the next couple of days to
28 | get feedback, and 2. I'd like to shoot for 1800 UTC on friday for a
29 | meeting.
30 |
31 | Thoughts?
32 |
33 | Deedra
34 The following are reasons why the proposal is not a good fit for devrel.
35 The concepts put forth are all based on legal systems that exist in some
36 government, US, EU, or whatever. Now, we have 300 developers working in
37 gentoo. compare that to the 300,000,000 people living in the US. what
38 are the odds that a person who *supposedly* commits a crime knows and/or
39 has affected the judge trying the case? It approaches ZERO. In the
40 rare case that this does happen, a new judge is appointed, or a mistrial
41 is declared.
42
43 Why does this matter? Due to the numbers, It's almost a certainty that
44 the judge hasn't had any interaction with the accused. In theory, this
45 allows him to be impartial.(we all know this frequently isn't true in
46 reality)
47
48 Now, consider how a judiciary board in a large organization handles
49 things. Chances are, they have had interaction with said accused, and
50 they act upon that information that they allready have, along with any
51 new facts that may pertain to the "crime." They certainly arn't
52 impartial. The only thing that prevents it from being "unfair" is the
53 fact that there is a panel, and not one person making the decision.
54
55 So, with that said, what are we closer to? A large country, or a large
56 organization. I'd say the latter, and I'm sure if people weren't trying
57 to berate Deedras idea they would agree.
58
59 About the proposal that was adopted a couple of months ago: It's a
60 great idea in theory. If we ever grew to numbers exceeding 10,000, I
61 would be inclined to think it may even work. However, as it stands, it
62 has accomplished 2 things, one good and one bad. First, it put into
63 place a structure where one "evil fucking devrel member" couldn't punish
64 another. Secondly, it makes devrel ineffective as the judicial body in
65 gentoo, because everyone would rather work on something more rewarding
66 than be forced to wade through the red tape the the proposal calls for.
67
68 In the end, I've read 20+ emails today on this thread, which we at best
69 "I don't like this", and at worst, "devrel is a conspiracy!", yet no one
70 has offered a solution. Put up or shut up. My recommendation would be
71 to merge the two groups, by expanding the panel of "judges" from 3-5 to
72 5-7. This cuts out a lot of the red tape and improves communication
73 while still retaining a similar number of people involved.
74
75 Disclaimer: I didn't actually bother to look up a)the number of devs,
76 b) the number of people living in the US; so please don't nitpick on
77 those points.
78 - --
79 =======================================================
80 Mike Doty kingtaco@g.o
81 Gentoo/AMD64 Strategic Lead PGP Key: 0xA797C7A7
82 Gentoo Developer Relations
83 ~ ===GPG Fingerprint===
84 ~ 0094 7F06 913E 78D6 F1BB 06BA D0AD D125 A797 C7A7
85 =======================================================
86 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
87 Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
88
89 iD8DBQFDHmmd0K3RJaeXx6cRAmnBAJkB4m80bP9A+nKRbm8TsAY6AQ1WvwCdHxBa
90 bX748RP3n9kqk4fvLyU5Nk8=
91 =NCJM
92 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
93 --
94 gentoo-devrel@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-devrel] devrel meeting etc Aron Griffis <agriffis@g.o>