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

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 14:51 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> details can remain private if necessary, but publishing a brief summary
> along the lines of "we discussed x and y and decided z" *has* to be
> less harmful than the current mess where people are deleting their work
> and considering resignation because of whatever it is the Council are
> up to...

Except we *did* do that when we first published what we'd done with the
CoC.  Just because ti didn't have a shiny "Meeting Summary" in the topic
doesn't mean it wasn't the outcome of the meeting.  You know the topic
of discussion.  You know the outcome.  The details are private.  Even
you admit that is fine.

I mean, all this "the Council is hiding something" conspiracy theory is
bullshit.  How about when I hang out with Mike Doty and we discuss
Gentoo stuff?  Is that some super-secret meeting where we're trying to
circumvent some supposed requirement for transparency?  Of course not...
If the individual members of the Council feel like getting together and
discussing something, we're perfectly free to do that.  We don't have to
tell you what we discussed.  We're allowed to bounce ideas off each
other, especially when discussing things said to us in confidence.  I
understand that some people disagree with this, but this is a simple
fact of life.  There are going to be cases where people will say
something to someone in confidence and not include everyone in on it.
There's nothing we can do about that and there is plenty of precedence
for it.  When someone asks me not to betray their trust, I won't.
That's just how I am.  If others feel that their knowing stuff that is
honestly insignificant in detail since the end result turned out to be
the same and done publicly, well, they're more than welcome to run for
Council, themselves, but if they were to divulge such information after
being privy to it, disciplinary action would *need* to be taken to
retain the trustworthiness of Gentoo as a whole.

Now, that being said, we *did* have a *public* meeting about our
discussion, and all *decisions* we made were 100% public.  I'm sorry if
anyone feels like they were slighted by not being included in the
discussions prior to the public meeting, but there's nothing anywhere
that says that we have to have all of our discussions in public or even
made publicly available.  We *do* have to have all of our decisions made
public, obviously.

Personally, I'd just assume make the thing public just to shut people
up, but I've really grown to have a stance where I'm less likely to give
in to this sort of pressure, since it will do nothing more but prove
that being a whiny bitch and trying to pressure people into doing
something will get people what they want.  I surely don't want to set
*that* precedent.

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