Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Leadership Structure

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

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Richard Freeman wrote:
| I was thinking a little of some of pros/cons of how Gentoo is organized,
| and maybe a few steps would help to improve it a little.  I'd consider
| this really to just be an item for discussion in terms of longer-term
| goals - not something that we should try to institute as a knee-jerk
| response to the current GLEP 39 debate.
...
| So, how do I propose to help sort these issues out?  Well, I was
| thinking that we don't need to revolutionize the current process,
| because I think the current process largely works.  However, I do
| propose a few changes:
|
| 1.  The council should be able to appoint a leader from its own ranks
| (and a backup).  This role would be like a prime minister in most
| parliamentary democracies.  They are really just a figurehead/spokesman,
| but they are at least a go-to person who can claim to speak for the
| council.  They can make decisions autonomously, but all binding
| decisions must be ratified by the council.  They can be appointed and
| de-appointed as needed and rotations could also be used (perhaps
| rotating somebody in to the backup role first and then onto the lead
role).
|

I don't think our current problem was caused by not having a "council
leader". Also, current policy already states that 2 council members can
make a decision on urgent matters that needs to be ratified by the full
council at their next meeting.

| 2.  The council would be the leaders of the distro with respect to all
| issues that don't involve anything that is legally Gentoo Foundation
| property.

You're voicing the view that the Foundation should be nothing more than
a holder for IP and assets. That is not what it was created for, nor
should it be limited to that, imo. Also, you're changing the focus of
the council as it was created as a technical body that would steer the
technical advancement of the distro.

| I also want to comment that I don't want to see these two bodies in
| conflict - neither has the role of being the voice of the "community" in
| a way that the other does not.  If we get into a mode where we have two
| leadership bodies in conflict I think it will be a net loss for Gentoo -
| we can't function if we have the Foundation repossessing hardware, and
| we can't function if devs start quitting because they feel like they're
| being treated as subservient to the "community".

I agree that we don't want to have the Council and the Trustees fighting
~ over who "rules" gentoo. However, they have a different membership. The
council is elected by *all* devs. The foundation has a list of members
[1] and a set of rules that currently stipulates that only devs that
have been around for one year and that vote for a foundation election
become members. So we have ex-devs that are foundation members and we
have many current devs that are not members of the foundation. There are
also plans to open membership to the foundation to accept members of the
community, be them users, companies, sponsors, partners or any
interested party.
In that sense, the council would represent the developer "community",
whilst the foundation would represent the "community" at large.

[1] -
http://dev.gentoo.org/~jmbsvicetto/trustees-election/200803-foundation-members

| 3.  Council will meet monthly, but any slacker policies will be at its
| own discretion.

I wasn't around the time the council was created, but from the mails
those that were sent, it was a "conscious" choice and option from the
developer community to set those in.

| 4.  Any developer may follow the following procedure to hold a
| referendum on any issue that will be binding on Gentoo (but not the
| Foundation):
|
| a.  Create a petition containing a clear resolution with voting options
| (which must include an option to abstain and an option to decline the
| resolution).
|
| b.  Collect gpg signatures from developers/staff.  The requisite number
| of signatures is 10% of the number devs who made commits in the last 30
| days.  Note that the count of devs making commits is used ONLY to
| determine the number of sigs needed - any devs/staff can provide sigs
| regardless of their role or level of activity as long as they haven't
| been retired/booted.

If your purpose it to count only active devs for the number of sigs
needed, you need a better method. You're leaving out (or run the chance
of leaving out) all staff from that count. It might be better to
subtract to the total number of devs, the total that shows up in the
slacker script.

| c.  Submit petition to council@g.o.  The council will post the petition
| on -dev-announce (or -core if the petition so indicates) and allow two
| weeks for debate and two weeks for voting.
|
| Note that the referendum process is intended to be rare (maybe the
| threshold should be 20% or more).  It could be used to impeach council
| members, make a decision, etc.  The council would be bound to execute
| the decision as best they are able.  If the council doesn't do a good
| job they could be impeached/etc - I think that is the best we can do
| since ultimately we're depending on humans to do the right thing, and
| the last thing we want is multiple councils with checks and balances and
| more debate than action any time we want to do something.

Although this process is somewhat lengthy and complex, we might need to
have a provision for it - for extraordinary circumstances.
If we try to institute it, we'll need to review a few clauses, though.

- --
Regards,

Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel / SPARC / KDE

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