Re: [gentoo-project] Should DevRel members be in Council?

[Rich Freeman]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o> wrote:
> The Council is elected by the members of the community holding a
> @gentoo.org email address.  Thats a very small subset of the Gentoo
> community ... but maybe we should open voting to the entire Gentoo
> community ?
>
> There are practical problems with that of course.

My main concern with that is that ultimately it is the developers that
make Gentoo go, and the focus of the Council tends to be on the
governance of the developers anyway.

If all of the devs want to do thing, and all of the users want to do
something else, then in the end the distro will end up going with the
devs, one way or another.  The only way volunteer projects go anywhere
is for volunteers to do the work.  You can't really give orders to
volunteers, but you can inspire them to follow through example.

That isn't to say that devs are the only ones who do anything for
Gentoo - there are staff who aren't devs, and I'm fine with them being
members of the Foundation.  The Council tends to stay focused on
matters that deal with the developers, so self-oversight is probably
fine.

I do hear what you're getting at though.  It sounds good to me in an
ideal world, but I am concerned that it might not work well in
practice.

> I see the council members as officers of the Foundation, not directors
> of the Foundation. The two roles are different and should be spilt.

Well, that's the whole two-headed monster bit.  They're not really
officers or directors of the Foundation, and "Gentoo" the distro and
Gentoo the Foundation aren't actually the same entity by our odd
organizational design.  Maybe you could call the Council the
leadership of the employee union.  :)

Long term it wouldn't hurt to change this.  Short-term I'd like to let
the Trustees continue to focus on getting the Foundation itself in
better shape.

Rich