Re: [gentoo-project] Council nominations

[Andreas K. Huettel]

Am Sonntag, 16. Juni 2013, 13:24:33 schrieb Agostino Sarubbo:
> I'm using the same thread, I'd like to nominate:
>
[...]
> dilfridge

Thank you, I accept. 

As for a manifesto....

1) Let me quote GLEP 39: "If the council does a lousy job handling global 
issues (or has no global vision), vote out the bums." Note that this talks 
about a "global vision"? That's actually right now what Gentoo is missing 
most. I'm not claiming that I alone will provide it, but I am convinced that 
it's the Council's job to collectively do that. 

1a) Consequence: the council should do more than just handing down decisions 
on stone tablets from the mountain. I suggest we add something else that the 
council can vote on, along the lines of a "policy recommendation". Here's an 
example for such a recommendation, see also below: "With respect to adding 
systemd unit files, maintainers should not refuse to cooperate as long as 
someone volunteers to do the resulting work." Since this is a recommendation, 
developers are free to ignore it. However, it would make the viewpoint of Your 
Elected Council clear, and the topic may be revisited if necessary at the next 
month's meeting for drafting up some stone tablets.

1b) Consequence: even if the council is a reactive body, since any developer 
can bring issues before the council, I will be happy to do so whenever I see 
fit, and I hope my prospective council colleagues will do the same.

1c) Consequence: in my opinion, the council has far too often "decided not to 
decide anything" in the past.

2) I do NOT see Gentoo's primary purpose as a "metadistribution". That's just 
a way of saying "we can't be bothered to work together". We are able to 
provide a great distribution to our users without the additional help of 
Funtoo, Pentoo, Sabayon, ... 
Of course, we should continue cooperation and good working relationship with 
our "downstreams", but that's not an excuse for NOT fixing things in Gentoo 
itself.

3) I am not using systemd, zfs, or paludis. I'm even trying to avoid nepomuk 
and akonadi. Nevertheless, as you all know, Gentoo is about choice! So, as 
long as this does not inflict undue efforts, we should all try hard to 
cooperate with other developers contributing to Gentoo, even if their projects 
seem a bit odd to us. Our users deserve maximum flexibility and the offer of 
bleeding-edge software. (The entire discussion about adding unit files to 
packages or about how to get rid of them in the installation if not needed is 
in my opinion just plain ridiculous.) Which gets me to...

4) Please remember. We're talking about a Linux distribution. This has - in 
terms of organization - more in common with a company than with a religion! 
(Which also means that if you try to burn someone at the stake you'll get 
kicked out fast. As a consequence...)

5a) I fully support Markos' initiative to get devrel on track and more active 
again. We *must* get away from the current abrasive culture. 

5b) I wish we had a similar resurrection initiative for QA. Any volunteers?

6) I have recently volunteered to become part of devrel. Should I be elected 
as council member, then I will let that activity rest until the end of my 
council term. Not because I see a conflict of interests, but because I just 
don't have the time for both.

Let me quote Rick's manifesto at the end, 

"No one pays me to work on gentoo, I'm not a software developer (etc) by
trade, I'm here on my own because I love gentoo and I want to see it
improve, and I believe everyone who reads the mailing lists will agree
there is a lot of room for that improvement at this time."

Cheers!
Andreas

-- 
Dr. Andreas K. Huettel
Institute for Experimental and Applied Physics
University of Regensburg
D-93040 Regensburg
Germany

tel. [phone] (mobile)
e-mail andreas.huettel@××.de
http://www.akhuettel.de/research/
http://www.physik.uni-r.de/forschung/huettel/