Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for July

[Ferris McCormick]

On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 01:40 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> On 05:30 Tue 01 Jul     , Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > Gentoo dev list to see.
>
> Here's the proposed agenda. Please respond if I forgot something, it's
> unclear, or you have another suggestion. As before, since we have an
> agenda in advance we won't be holding an open floor.

I'll try to clarify my second agenda item on an absolute ban.  Also I
might edit my private request to make it pure vanilla and send it out,
too, so that people may cross check my summary if they wish.  If people
want that, please respond saying so.

1.  Your summary in the agenda is a fair reading of my request.
However, I don't think it's realistic to expect a decision within a week
because I think instituting a policy and procedure allowing a complete
ban forever from Gentoo requires at the least a change to the Code of
Conduct and a review cycle for that.

2.  I can't spell out exactly what people are thinking of when
discussing absolute bans, because I get the sense that different people
have different ideas about just what we would mean by that.  So I think
the first step is for someone who advocates such a procedure needs to
spell out exactly what it would be and why we would do it and under
whose authority, etc.  As probably everyone knows, I am absolutely
opposed to any such thing, so I am not the person to do this.

3.  So, I don't think we can reach a decision on anything until we are
all clear on what we are deciding on.

4.  Here's what I think is meant by a complete ban.  *These are only my
own inferences from reading between the lines and trying to put
different comments together in some coherent fashion.*
     Under some rather unclear conditions, some combination of
     devrel/userrel/trustees/infra could decide to impose a complete,
     permanent ban on a member (user or, I suppose developer) of our
     community.  This would have the following effects:
       a.  The person could post to no gentoo mailing list;
       b.  The person could not post to gentoo bugzilla;
       c.  The person could not participate in #gentoo- IRC
            channels (although this runs into conflict with individual
            channel policy);
       d.   The person could not contribute to gentoo (hence my corner
            case of a security fix) except perhaps through a proxy;
       e.   (Perhaps any upstream projects in which the person banned
            would be notified of the ban??? --- I'm not sure).
Right now, I don't know anymore if what I just described is what is
being proposed or not.

5.  I am told that nothing is forever, and that if whatever problems
triggered such a ban were corrected, the ban might be lifted.  I note,
however, that since the banned person could not participate in Gentoo
things, as a practical matter we'd never know if anything was corrected
or not.  (Except through 3rd parties.)

6.  Presumably, all of this would be done in secret and whoever is being
hit by such a ban would have no opportunity to respond before the ban's
imposition.  I suppose there would be a right to appeal to council,
assuming council took no part in deciding on the ban.

7.  [Argument] I view this as a pretty major change in how Gentoo
operates.  So someone needs to clarify my inferences in paragraph 4, and
then we should think very carefully about it before allowing for any
such practice.

8.  [Argument]  I note that we are likely to institute some form of
possible moderation for the gentoo-dev mailing list (presumably based on
Code of Conduct violations), and if we do that, it effectively satisfies
the intent of any absolute ban, but is not nearly so traumatic to the
system.  I note that this is a minority view among those who have
discussed this.

Donnie,
  I don't know if that clarifies anything or just makes things more
confusing.  It's the best I can come up with.

Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)