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

[Alexandre Buisse]

On Wed, Apr  4, 2007 at 22:27:45 +0200, Grant Goodyear wrote:

> Alexandre Buisse wrote: [Wed Apr 04 2007, 02:36:43PM CDT]
> > I won't take this to the council myself, but I think this should be
> > discussed at the very least: we need a way to limit the council power,
> > since it seems there is nothing to this effect in the metastructure
> > glep.
>
> For what it's worth, I deliberately wrote the GLEP that way.  The
> truth of the matter is that the Council has only whatever power the
> devs permit, so adding additional restrictions seems like a really bad
> idea to me.

This is true as long as you don't have written rules on who is the boss
of what. Since the metastructure explicitly says "council is the boss of
everyone", I don't see why there shouldn't be an explicit "but if
council messes up, we can appeal and/or fire them". Most power systems,
if not all, do have this one way or another. Unlimited power is no good.

 
> > I think that when members of the council, who have total control
> > on gentoo, say things like "I don't feel we should listen to what the
> > dev community thinks", then one should begin to worry.
>
> Someone actually said that?

Yes, on #gentoo-council iirc. I don't have logs at the moment so I can't
give you the reference, but it was during the CoC "discussion".
 

> In any event, Gentoo is a community project.  If you can convince
> enough of the community that you're right, and the Council is wrong,
> then the Council is extremely likely to listen.  If they don't, vote
> out the bums.

Well, the thing is, vote happens only once a year, and quite a lot of
things can be done during that time. I just think that not having any
rule at all concerning limitations to the council is tying our hands in
our back. If the council never messes up, then this rule won't ever be
used, and if they do, we'll be happy to have this handy rather than
having to argue for ages and being told "you elected us, so shut up
and if you don't agree, don't vote for us next time" (which is an
answer I actually got several times).

Now, this is all I have to say on the topic. I resigned from gentoo and,
to be perfectly honest, I don't really care one way or another since I'm
not involved anymore, but I felt that this should at least be said,
since it's in my opinion a major flaw of the current metastructure.

Regards,
/Alexandre
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