Re: [gentoo-dev] A few questions to our nominees

[Richard Freeman]

Denis Dupeyron wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 12:45 PM, Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o> wrote:
>> Before the flames start lets consider the Package Manager Specification
>> (PMS) as an example. For this (very black and white) illustration,
>> forget the council discussions to date and imagine that representatives
>> of all three package managers went to council and said in unison
>> "We have agreed this specification".
>> Are council really going to start picking holes in it and say no?
>
> The council being our global technical lead, I can't see why they
> wouldn't be allowed to reject an agreed package manager specification
> or parts of it. If not, why bother electing them at all ? Not that I
> think that would be a smart move, but that's a different discussion.
>

Well, obviously there is a balance here, but one thing that Roy pointed 
out that I completely agree with is the need to have most of the 
discussion BEFORE the meeting.

A council meeting is a very time-limited event which is really designed 
to officially ratify decisions that have essentially already been made. 
  The best place to have open discussion and debate over an issue is on 
mailing lists/etc - this allows the widest possible community to 
participate, and gives people time to consider their decisions.  Policy 
shouldn't be decided by what the best shoot-from-the-hip argument was at 
a 1 hour meeting.

Maybe if an item is on the agenda and it doesn't really have consensus 
there is some value to 5 minutes of free discussion, followed by a delay 
for one month to hash it out on lists/etc.

For the most part I think the current council has embraced this, 
although most of the discussion on lists do not involve council members 
themselves (though they clearly follow the discussions).
-- 
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