Re: [gentoo-nfp] Please communicate with us verses blogging at us

[Square Bottle]

On Jan 21, 2008 8:15 PM, Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@g.o> wrote:
> I believe that his intentions are noble, even if his approach leaves
> something to be desired.  I also think that I understand his reason for
> doing things the way that he has done them.  By pleading his case to the
> community, and more specifically, his fans, he drums up grass roots
> support before many of the people within Gentoo are even aware of the
> issue.  This does put certain pressure to get a decision made, adding a
> deadline just puts the final nail in the coffin.  It is either all or
> nothing, and we relinquish all control to Daniel so he can do what he
> thinks needs to be done, without discussion.  I don't know whether he
> believes that democracy and every developer having a voice has itself
> been a cause of much of the recent issues, but it is definitely
> something that could be plausible as a motive.

I think you're right, but I think it's worth saying why. It's not that
he's trying to subvert any democratic process, but rather, it's
because he sees the current way of doing things as being too much of a
cathedral in the ESR sense, and probably also doubted that anything
would get done under the current system at all. And he likely felt
that it was a community decision, and felt that making a blog post was
a more easily accessible way for people to hear him. As far as the
deadline goes, he  said that it was because he didn't want his life
hanging on this forever and that he certainly didn't want to get
caught up in a long debacle, which is a fair thing to not want. It's
past his deadline now and he's still talking, so yeah, it's likely
that he was giving an early deadline just to make sure things got
moving.

I'm inclined to agree with him on the matter of things not being as
easily accessed and understood by the larger community. Most of people
in the general community feel very disconnected from the Gentoo
decision making process. The way it's all set up, there's not much
incentive to inform and involve all of us. Yes, there is large and
elaborate bureaucracy aimed at conducting all matters in an open,
orderly way, but I think we all know that it's quite labyrinthine, and
more often than not, there is no attempt made to convert
"programmer-speak" to "regular-speak" even for the people who do go
and dig up the correct sub-section of the correct sub-committee's
correct meeting log anyway.

As for using such a quick deadline as a tool purely to get things
kickstarted, this is only a hypothesis of mine. Again, he said it was
because he had to know what was going on so that he could make other
life decisions, which is itself reasonable. But again, I think it was
also just to get things moving. I'm not really bothered by this
though, personally. It probably would have been more to his advantage
to come in slowly, since it seems like most of the developers felt
threatened and got defensive (the sheer number of "There is nothing
wrong, the media is all wrong, nothing is wrong, okay maybe a little
bit is wrong but we were fixing it a year ago, but the media blew it
all out of proportion, and really, everything is fine, nothing to see
here!" posts that I've seen has been amusingly high, to say the
least). So now, he's got an uphill battle.

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 18:54 -0800, Square Bottle wrote:
>> I definitely think that Mr. Robbins should be at the center
>> of the discussion on this list. :)
>
>Why?  Shouldn't he be a *member* of the discussion on this list?  I
>mean, no individual should be at the center of anything with Gentoo, a
>free and open community of developers, administrators, hobbyists, and
>anyone else who decides to participate.

All I was saying is that I feel like it would be nice if the major
proponents of each side played a bigger role in these discussions,
heh. Pretty innocent and reasonable thing to want, right?

I definitely wasn't even insinuating that anybody should be excluded
(or sponsored or otherwise weighted at other people's expense), and I
really, really, really wasn't insinuating that Gentoo shouldn't be a
free and open community.

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 22:06 -0500, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> > > Also, he's not trying to keep this mailing list a secret. I actually
> > > joined this list because I saw his suggestion to do so on his blog,
> > > and I'm sure that many others joined it because they heard about it
> > > from him.
> >
> > Sure, and while he is suggesting it to others. Is he following his own
> > advice?
>
> Is he leading people here, or is he just telling them to come here and
> expecting them to do so?
>
> Think about it.

Okay, I've thought about it, and I still don't think that he posted on
his blog that people should join this list because he wanted it to be
a secret, which was my original point. It seems to me like some people
want to think that Daniel Robbins has become the boogey man or
something, which is kind of sad because whether or not you want him to
return as the leader of the project, everybody still owes him a thank
you for starting the project in the first place at the very least. If
Daniel Robbins didn't like openness, I don't think he'd have the same
resume, to say the least. Trying to paint him as some insidious figure
not only isn't very nice, but it certainly doesn't do anything to
convince me to agree with the people who are saying this kind of
stuff. I agreed that it'd be great if he'd come here and talk, but I
still feel like I must object to insinuations that he's posting to his
blog from his secret volcano, sitting in the shadows and practicing
his evil laugh. Come on, guys. If he didn't want to be open about this
stuff, he would not have posted to his blog, or taken the time to talk
to the foundation members that are still around, or posted a link to
this announce list. Or founded Gentoo.
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