Re: [gentoo-dev] Proposed addition to the Social Contract

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 16:39 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
> Hi vapier, thanks for pointing this out. Am I wrong to assume from your
> responses in this thread to ciaranm's "hypothetical" case that the
> current council have not implemented any policy at the instruction of an
> external company or organisation? Or under the threat of the withdrawal
> of services that company/organisation provides to us?

We have not implemented any policy at the instruction of anyone.

We have not implemented any policy under the threat of removal of
services.

> I certainly inferred that the council had been told do "something" or
> "outside parties that provide services and goods to Gentoo" would cease
> to "maintain" that relationship. While there is some ambiguity in what
> wolf31o2 said, it certainly doesn't read to me that this is a preemptive
> measure, especially as the first line references already having been
> told something in confidence.

There was a lot of ambiguity, and it was done on purpose.  Nearly every
one of our sponsors have mentioned disapproval in the constant bad press
Gentoo has been getting.  Pretty much anything else they said was in
confidence, but at no point did anyone claim that any policy should be
made/updated/whatever or some action would/wouldn't be taken.  Instead,
the Council decided to take action *on our own* based on what we
perceived to be a possible threat to our continued valued relationships
with *all* of our sponsors.

Again, nobody asked us to do *anything* and nobody made any threats of
any kind.  This was *entirely* a preemptive measure.  It was actually
done more at the counsel of some professional PR people which we have
been speaking with about our image.  This person's advice was to move on
these perceived issues quickly and decisively, which is exactly what we
did.

> I admit I haven't asked wolf31o2 about this, but then he implied he was
> forbidden from discussing it further. Perhaps you have not been so
> constrained by an outside organisation?

Then you probably should have talked to me, huh?  If something was
spoken in confidence to the Council, it would mean all of us.

Quite frankly, if you're going to try to use something that I said as
some form of "proof" of something and it is ambiguous, you could at
least have the courtesy to contact me.

There's no conspiracy.  Nobody told us to do anything, other than the PR
person, whose advice was requested by us.  Anything else is bullshit or
conjecture.  Now, can we get on to our regularly scheduled development
and leave this non-development banter where it is more appropriate?

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation