Re: [gentoo-dev] Democracy: No silver bullet

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 14:00 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> A distribution is more than just an entity that packages upstream
> tarballs. I agree with your point, but it misses a large chunk of what
> we do.

We also have releases.

Another thing that we do is fix bugs, even in upstream packages, and
submit them to the upstream.  In this regard, we are a valuable member
of the community as a whole.  How many patches have come out of Gentoo
to fix bugs/vulnerabilities?

> If this is the Gentoo vision, then why are we even doing anything else?
> We've already reached our only goal, which is packaging stuff, and all
> we need to do is bump it.

I surely hope this isn't the vision, or I've been wasting an awful lot
of time.

> > Except ... even today, folks simply aren't empowered to vote on every
> > decision (other than by voting with their feet).  Your hypothesis
> > seems to be based on a flawed model of how Gentoo works, I'm afraid.
>
> "Official" votes, sure. But what about GLEP discussions on -dev? That's
> the only way anything major ever happens, and it might as well be a
> requirement for a unanimous vote among all ~350 developers. The only
> time I can recall even a single dissenter before a GLEP moved on to the
> council was brix on Sunrise.

I was there, too.  Of course, I also prove some of your points.  I got
tired of giving the same arguments ad nauseum.  I eventually gave up
fighting it to move on to other things.  I will admit that many of my
concerns were resolved.

> > The basic cause always comes down to weak or non-existent management.
>
> Yes, and that's exactly my point. We need stronger management.

Indeed.

> >> All in all, the vocal minority has done a splendid job of becoming more
> >> influential, crippling Gentoo's ability to do anything at all about its
> >> members, their flames, their outstanding work at ruining people's fun
> >> and enjoyment of Gentoo, and their waste of everyone else's time.
> >
> > Can you back this up with three examples in the last twelve months
> > where this has happened?

Sunrise (twice)
Pretty much anything dealing with portage features (or lack thereof)

> Any long debate where more than 25% of the posts came from a single person.

I know that I've been a participant in at least one of these.  I've also
noticed it an started to "dial back" my responses to try to stay more
on-topic and technical.  Having a nice release helps to curb the free
time for replying to emails, too.  ;]

> > Our problem is that we have a critical mass of groups who do not share
> > a culture to bind them together, and drive them to overcome their
> > differences.
>
> I'll agree with that.

As would I.

> I know this is partially changing, but I'm unsure that any group outside
> of the council will ever be trusted to suspend or kick people out.

I agree with this pretty strongly, if only because the council is an
elected group.

> > Folks don't vote on stuff.  To pick a recent example, none of the
> > folks who opposed Sunrise actually had any means to vote to prevent it
> > happening.  What they had to do was to lobby the council, who were the
> > only folks with a vote.
>
> Oh, gimme a break. Screaming about it on -dev for hundreds of posts
> isn't just equivalent to a vote, it's better. It makes people think
> there's more than 2 developers opposed to it.

Really?  Even you didn't remember that *I* was opposed to Sunrise and
probably accounted for at least a good 50 responses.  Yes, good came
from it.  Yes, it could have been done much, much better.

> I'd rather get rid of devrel altogether (at least its conflict
> resolution role) and have the council deal with this.

Agreed.

> > I'm not standing for election, but maybe someone who is would be
> > interested in investigating some ideas Sejo discussed with me when he
> > left us.  The summary is my own; hopefully I've captured Sejo's ideas
> > accurately.
> >
> > *  Every staff member has to belong to a team.  You join a team by
> > being voted onto the team by the other members of the team.  They
> > don't vote you in, you can't join.

I don't think his ideas included anything explicit.  Only more that the
team (or even just the lead) could give a thumbs down to you joining.

> > *  If you're not part of any team, your rights and privileges as a
> > staff member are automatically terminated.  There's no place to go to
> > appeal.

I think the intention was for the council to be the appellate body.

> > *  You can be voted off the team at any time.  The teams are self-managing.

I'm sure a vote wasn't necessary.

> The goal?

Hopefully, to streamline processes and give power back to individual
projects to govern themselves in internal matters and let people get
back to doing development.  That's a goal I would love to see us strive
to achieve in the next year.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux