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

[Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen]

On Thursday 24 August 2006 02:17, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
<snip>

> When I think about where Gentoo was when we turned into a democracy
> years ago, and where Gentoo is now, I don't see much of a difference on
> the large scale. We lack any global vision for where Gentoo is going, we
> can't agree on who our audience is, and everyone's just working on
> pretty much whatever they feel like.
Some like it that way others don't I think that is normal when you have 
elections. If more developers will work for a global vision we will have one.

> The vocal minority often gets its way, despite 99% of the other
> developers being happy with any given situation.
Yeah, that is a problem. Simple rules and stronger enforcement of those rules 
would be great.

> All in all, the vocal minority has done a splendid job of becoming more
> influential, crippling Gentoo's ability to do anything at all about its
> members, their flames, their outstanding work at ruining people's fun
> and enjoyment of Gentoo, and their waste of everyone else's time.
Then vote for someone else.

>  Being able to work together long term is this project's greatest asset,
>  one far more important than any set of changes to the code, and turning
>  arguments about code into issues that affect our long-term ability to
>  work harmoniously together is just not worth the trade-off by any
>  conceivable stretch of the imagination. ...
I agree. If we can't come up with many global technical objectives this could 
be a good candidate .

> I'm not the only one to suggest that a democracy isn't the most
> productive way to run Gentoo. When people wanted to change in how Gentoo
> was run, democracy was the only option considered, rather than simply
> changing the leaders. There's an ongoing assumption that if problems
> exist, it must be somewhere in the structure rather than in the people.
Democracy is not just democracy it can be run in many ways.

> If I could go back in time a couple of years and prevent this democracy
> from ever happening, I would. If I could fix these problems myself, I
> would. But it requires buy-in from the entire Gentoo community if we're
> to do anything about it.
I was only a dev for a few months with drobbins so I don't really have any 
personal experience from that part of the Gentoo history but I definately 
would not like to abandon the Foundation and work under some arbitrary chief.

Going backwards is not the solution.

-- 
Sune Kloppenborg Jeppesen (Jaervosz)
Gentoo Linux Security Team
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