[gentoo-project] Gentoo: growing pains & the future.

[Robin H. Johnson]

(Please reply on the gentoo-project list, I have set the Reply-To header
for this mail appropriately).

===
TL;DR: 
- Does GLEP39 still serve all the needs of Gentoo? Devrel useful?
- How to improve ourselves as a distribution (technical) and as people
  (personal interactions)?
- Would EVERY developer please start acting professionally in all fora?
===

I would like us to thank (and remember those no longer with us) all of
the past trustees and council members (a near-complete list is included
as footnote [9]), for what they have done to try and grow the
distribution.

Regardless of whoever who decides to run for council and trustees this
year, I would like to ask developers and foundation members to look at
the history of Gentoo, prior councils and prior trustees, and ask
themselves: 
What value does the distribution, Council, and Trustees provide to you?
Why they are voting for any given candidate; is this the best for the
future of Gentoo, or does it really even matter?

Of candidates: Is it because of their technical prowess; ability to
reach compromises; they can manage people well; possibly because you
simply like or respect them; or because they're a hothead and you want
to shake things up?  Regardless of why you pick them, all of the above
are things they may have to do on the council and trustees.

I have contributed just over a decade of my life to Gentoo at this
point, many times choosing consulting work or jobs because they enabled
me to contribute more.  I'm one of the very few developers that has been
both a council member and a trustee, the others are: dberkholz, seemant,
swift, agriffis, azarah, wolf31o2

In 2006, I ran for council, on a platform of improving the security of the
Portage tree, via my tree-signing GLEPs.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/39928/focus=40610
I would call that project a long-term failure; the standards were completed,
but like many GLEPs, mostly become forgotten and left by the wayside.
In that original goal, I would consider my term on the council to be a failure,
but extremely enlightening as to the politics and human aspect of a technical
organization. I left at the end of my term, not seeking re-election.

In 2009, I ran for trustees on a platform of radical transparency, that
manifesto is also still available
http://dev.gentoo.org/~robbat2/robbat2-foundation2009-manifesto.txt
My goals were somewhat less quantifiable at the time, but I feel that I
did help bring trustees to the same well-documented level as council;
our financial & legal affairs are in good shape (many thanks to
quantumsummers), and well-visible to the member base (yes, I would like
a return to visible quarterly accounting or more detailed granularity,
but we don't have that many transactions). I ran again successfully in
2011, because I wasn't done my work yet.

I choose to not nominate anybody for either body this time; not because
I have no faith in my fellow developers, but because I think we as a
distribution have needs beyond our present structure of Council and
Trustees, *Rel and the projects.

Many of our early organizational issues have been replaced with those of
a more mature organization. I think to a degree, we have grown beyond
GLEP39.  Go ahead, read GLEP39 again, and think about it from the
perspective of a new(er) developer, vs. The Old Ones (as I saw it put
recently). Now go to the projects that you're in, and tell me, when was
the last time you had a real discussion about who lead a given project
(the GLEP was careful to say 'selection' rather than 'election'). Does
who "leads" a project actually matter in all cases? If a more
established dev refuses a change, what can you do?

The council, originally founded as technical body in 2005, has been
running for 8 years, and in that time GLEP submissions have been
replaced by EAPI changes to a minor degree, but overall we are no longer
adapting to change as we once were.

GLEP submissions have dropped dramatically, and instead we have a lot
less highly visible change (unless it breaks things). Does this mean I
expect everything to be a GLEP? No, the GLEP process in itself can be a
hindrance to getting what you want done, and regardless of how great an
idea it is, it doesn't guarantee adoption. Should we scrap GLEPs
entirely? No, we should push even more of our changes through them,
because they are a lot less personal than other proposals on the mailing
lists. They are TECHNICAL improvements, and need to be considered
PROFESSIONALLY, without any personal malice.

Put the GLEPs to the council if they need more consensus, and the
council needs to consider/approve them more often. If it's just smaller
technical changes, let any developer feel free to do it; and take
responsibility for their actions if they cause any breakage. Herds were
created to group related ebuilds together (not developers), nor to stop
development.

Many times in our history, we have tried to grapple with the human
problems in our distribution, many times unsuccessfully.
I was there when:
- The Zynot Fork (2003)
- The Ombudsman position (GLEP7) was formed due to the Zynot conflict
- The first NFP board was formed (2004)
- drobbins leaving Gentoo [the first time] (2005)
- The "Gentoo Women" project (2006) with the Mens' Rights attacks.
- Council implemented the first CoC & Proctors (2007) with early
  Paludis/EAPI conflicts.
- Our corporation status was temporarily revoked (2008), and drobbins
  came back briefly.
- Exherbo started/forked (2008)
- LolGentoo/LolFlameeyes attack blogs (2008)
- Gentoo Ten (2009)
- The ongoing matters of the eudev fork & systemd-integration 
(the above are the ones that come to mind, I'm sure I'm missing many
more).

Various inappropriate, emotionally charged remarks on Gentoo-related
blogs as well as official mailing lists:
- Our inter-dev Israeli/Palestine conflict
- "mips team killed the baby jesus"
- "Over my dead CVS"
- "Ten Ways PMS Raped your Baby"
- "the council needs to grow a pair"
(apologies to geoman, flameeyes, ciaranm, wolf31o2 and other developers
for the example usage).

Many of these and more all showed us times where we had problems
interacting with each other as decent and good people. The statements
themselves were hostile, degrading & hurtful, but so was the environment
that engendered them.

We "solve" this, we tried to add the Ombudsman, CoC, Proctors, Developer
Relations, User Relations (later also Community Relations), but they
were primarily punitive measures. Many of these were founded/developed
by the Council, as extensions beyond the pre-existing devrel role (yes,
it predates council). 

NONE of those measures really worked, many of them caused more dissent
[1].
Even GLEP39 laid it out clearly:
"Regardless of whether or not it is justified, devrel is loathed by many
in its enforcement role."

Instead, I would like to call on every developer, foundation member, and
general member of the community, to stand up for being professional, and
hold all other developers to the same standard.

Think to yourself:
"If I said $X to my boss or underlings at work, would I get fired or
sued for abuse or harassment?"

Watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaqpoeVgr8U&feature=player_embedded
It's the head of the Australian Armed Forces encouraging everybody to
take a stand against sexual harassment. 
(Apologies to those to the deaf members of the community, I could only
find a partial transcript here [2])

The Internet remembers a lot of things, even when you think it's not
being logged, and your past will come back to you; clean up your act
before it's too late to save yourself.

If you think you're going to take whatever results you get from your
statements, and continue to be hostile, then GTFO.

If anybody else has other suggestions how we can improve the
distribution, beyond dropping devrel from GLEP39, I'm all ears.

[1] "If You Won't Play Nice I'll Take My Ball And Go Home.", Andrew Trelane vs. Ciaranm (2009)
http://www.trelane.net/blog/trelane/2009/09/if_you_wont_play_nice_ill_take_my_ball_and_go_home?page=4
[2] "The Standard You Walk Past is the Standard You Accept", Rebecca
Watson, partial transcript and commentary on sexual harassment in the
Australian Military (2013)
http://skepchick.org/2013/06/the-standard-you-walk-past-is-the-standard-you-accept/

[9] Past Council & trustees
Past council members
--------------------
(sorted by meeting attendance)
 77 betelgeuse
 45 dberkholz
 38 ulm
 37 chainsaw
 31 dertobi123
 30 scarabeus
 29 vapier
 28 lu_zero
 25 jmbsvicetto
 24 solar
 24 grobian
 21 leio
 18 flameeyes
 14 wired
 14 halcy0n
 13 wolf31o2
 13 robbat2
 13 Kugelfang
 13 KingTaco
 12 SwifT
 12 jokey
 12 ferringb
 11 williamh
 11 seemant
 11 Koon
 11 kloeri
 11 hwoarang
 11 dev-zero
 11 calchan
 10 cardoe
  9 agriffis
  8 UberLord
  8 azarah
  8 amne
  6 patrick
  1 jaervosz

Past trustees
-------------
(Many of the early years of foundation, there was not good recording, so
I don't have a complete list of meeting attendance, or even meetings
prior to 2008)
2008-present (alphabetical):
dabbott
fmccor
g2boojum
neddyseagoon
quantumsummers
rich0
robbat2
tgall_foo
tsunam
wltjr

2006 trustees (semi-alphabetical):
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/399
g2boojum
mcummings
seemant
stuart
wolf31o2
rl03 (seemant resigned 2 days after being elected)
pauldv (stuart resigned 1 month after being elected)

The first elected trustees in 2005 (alphabetical):
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/252
carpaski
cshields
dmwaters
dostrow
g2boojum
jhuebel
klieber
kumba
pylon
ramereth
seemant
spyderous (now known as dberkholz)
swift

The original NFP board in 2004 (alphabetical):
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/72
agriffis
azarah
carpaski
dmwaters
g2boojum
klieber
method
pauldv
pfeifer
seemant
swift
zhen

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux: Developer, Trustee & Infrastructure Lead
E-Mail     : robbat2@g.o
GnuPG FP   : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85