Re: [gentoo-dev] Council meeting 19 April 2010

[Dror Levin]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 21:05, Denis Dupeyron <calchan@g.o> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Ben de Groot <yngwin@g.o> wrote:
> > So all I'm asking is to do your job and make decisions on issues that
> > affect all of Gentoo. The issues I brought up are wider than a single
> > individual project.
>
> And almost 100% of the time this needs to run through a GLEP, which is
> the case here. Then the council will do all the things you've pasted
> from GLEP 39

I thought the council was a body that should be capable of action, not
merely one that gives a stamp of approval for stuff other people do.
Was I wrong?

Reading all your manifestos from the elections shows you all had
things you wanted to do, things you wanted to change (git migration,
forming a group of experts to discuss technical issues, QA
propagation, just to name a few). Where did all that go to? If all the
council is currently able to do is get everybody involved in
bureaucracy (e.g. writing GLEPs for centralizing documentation instead
of putting a page full of links) just so it could meet once a month to
decide on bugzilla resolutions, then something is wrong.

All council members not only volunteered for that position, but also
had other people voting for them. Didn't you do that so you could have
a larger influence? So you could make Gentoo better? How do you plan
to achieve that if you just wait for other people to do it? I don't
see why there is such strong opposition by your side to actually do
something, after all, that's what you're there for.

As I've seen in the last few days, the common reaction to this is,
"Well, what do you want us to do? Force people to do stuff?". Why did
you want to be a council member if you have no idea how to accomplish
the things you wanted to do? How did you think you were going to
achieve all those things written in your manifesto? Being in the
council is a responsibility, and one which you took upon yourself
willingly. All we're now requesting is that you all stand up to that
responsibility and use your authority to make changes to how Gentoo
work, not point fingers and ask rhetorical questions.

Ben raised some very painful issues which hurt Gentoo daily but are
not being addressed for a long time. The way I see it, the council's
job is to lead Gentoo, and that includes things that individual
members may not find interesting. These are global issues which are
under the council's responsibility. Gentoo's best interest should be
in mind, not personal interests, and so the council should strive to
achieve all those things so that Gentoo may benefit from it. That's
what leadership is, and that's what your job is.

Let's take redesigning the homepage as an example. Our website has the
same design since at least 2002, and to users it looks dead. This is
seriously hurting Gentoo, and its inability to fix the situation has
become a laughing stock. Clearly, Gentoo as a whole suffers and it's
the council's responsibility to address this issue. Now, I'm not
saying that council members should sit around all day playing with
CSS, but this issue should be one of their top priorities. Maybe ask
for users to help, reward a volunteer to do it with funds from the
foundation, heck maybe even pay some company to do it, but just do
something, even though you may not think dealing with this is
interesting, but a response like "if you want it then work on it and
make it happen" is unacceptable.


Note that all that is said here is not pointed at any specific member
of the council, but at the council as a whole. I did not intend to
hurt anybody, but am genuinely concerned for Gentoo's well being.

Dror Levin