Re: [gentoo-dev] Introducing the Proctors - Draft Code of Conduct for Gentoo

[Grant Goodyear]

Thanks for the work on the new doc; it's much appreciated.

Here's some comments, in no particularly good order:

* Can we find a better name than "the Proctors", please?
  Yes, that's a completely petty point, but it was the first
  one that came to mind.

> As some of you are already aware, I was at the last Council meeting
> given a Task. This Task was to draft a proposed Code of Conduct for
> Gentoo, and a scheme for enforcing it. The current version of this
> proposal can be found at http://dev.gentoo.org/~christel/coc.xml
> comments and suggestions both on- and off-list are appreciated.

* I highly recommend reading http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct
  and our new doc side-by-side.  The former provides strong, positive 
  guidelines for members of the community, with penalties for
  failing to live up to those guidelines kept vague and mostly
  out-of-sight, while still implying that the rules have teeth.  
  Our doc focuses much more on not doing bad things
  (instead of on an implicit expectation of doing good things), it
  actually highlights punishment before bad behavior before good
  (or "acceptable") behavior, and the tone is rather more tentative.
  I much prefer Ubuntu's doc.  It's not completely relevant to Gentoo,
  but I'd much rather crib from their text (assuming Ubuntu's
  permission, since that doc is copyrighted and I don't know what
  license, if any, they use), making minor changes to better reflect how 
  Gentoo works, than use the proposed doc in its current form.

> Any input will have to be received by Thursday, 15 March, 1200GMT in
> order to be useful; the Council will be voting on it later that day at
> 2100UTC.

* I understand the desire to act quickly, so that it appears that Gentoo
  is doing something about this problem.  However, I agree with those who
  think that a few days isn't really enough time for an adequate
  discussion.  For this sort of policy to be effective, devs need to
  agree with it.  The Council can still make temporary rules on Thursday
  while allowing the rest of the process to occur more leisurely. 

* Having a group of folks separate from devrel who would be doing
  similar things to what devrel does (when devrel isn't involved in 
  recruiting) somehow seems a bit silly.  I'd much rather we just broaden
  that part of Developer Relations to Community Relations.

* Ubuntu requires that their devs sign a copy of their code of conduct.
  (I assume an electronic signature suffices?)  Would that be a good
  idea for us to do something similar?  I don't really have a strong
  feeling one way or another.

Despite how critical I'm being, I really do appreciate the work that
has gone into this so far.  Thank you very much.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@g.o
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76