Re: [gentoo-dev] Democracy: No silver bullet

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 14:54 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> It's very easy to claim that "there are too many flamewars", even if
> that isn't actually true. It's hard to claim "Portage needs replacing,
> the tree has huge QA issues, several archs are horribly unmaintained and
> too many developers don't have a clue what they're doing" because a)
> they're difficult problems to address, b) if you do say them, Condorcet
> ensures that you won't get elected and c) you might be expected to fix
> them.

Well, I've held of on replying to this thread for a bit, mostly due to
lack of time since taking a week off for LWE, but also because I really
wanted to formulate what I wanted to say properly.  Forgive me, but your
post just seemed like a good place to comment.

As far as the "claims" that you posted, I definitely agree with all of
them except the "portage needs replacing" one, and that is mostly due to
my lack of knowledge of the internals of portage.  I simply don't think
I know enough about it to speak with any authority.

I *am* running for the council this time around.  Quite frankly, I would
love to work on fixing these problems, and I know that many of the
people running for the council do, too.

> Most of these problems could be solved if we had a council that was far
> less spineless, a council that's prepared to address the *real* issues
> rather than doing nothing, a council that shows leadership and provides
> direction where it's needed without screwing things up where it's not.

I definitely agree here.  What has made me decide to run for the council
is my wish to see things improve before we honestly do start
hemorrhaging developers.  We have seen indications that it is coming,
but it hasn't started quite yet.  A strong leadership is needed to give
us direction where needed, and also to leave people well enough alone
where it is not needed.  I hope that all of the people elected to the
council are capable of doing both, as it really is what Gentoo seems to
need.

I also would much rather see us return to a system where the merit of
ones work plays a more important role in the voice one has on global
issues.  Perhaps the idea of "one man, one vote" simply doesn't work
well amongst a large group of volunteers with vastly differing levels of
involvement.  Perhaps more voting is the answer.  Truthfully, I do not
know.  However, I lean on the side of a strong set of leaders having the
authority to make decisions, with limited voting only to establish the
leaders.  After all, if they're voted into office by the majority, then
the majority must want them to represent them, right?

> The problem with the old system was devrel's habit of holding secret
> meetings, Daniel's habit of going off and deciding new directions
> (catalyst, genkernel, ...) without consulting those who understood the
> issues involved and so on. The problem with the new system is that it
> encourages fence sitting and stagnation, and draws focus away from the
> real issues and onto populist mud flinging.

Quite frankly, I think that with a properly run community, there should
be no need for a "Developer Relations" project, since it should be
mostly self-policing.  Beyond that, the leadership should have the power
and the ability to take care of problems in a timely manner without the
need for droves of bureaucratic process.  I'm sure nearly every member
of devrel would agree that they would love to see a Gentoo where devrel
simply wasn't needed.

What I see with the upcoming newly-elected council is a chance to learn
from the past year and rectify our downfalls and mistakes.  Let's all
just hope that this is what happens, rather than compounding the problem
further.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux