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

[Roy Bamford]

On 2006.08.27 22:37, Duncan wrote:
> Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o> posted
> 1156678084l.9833l.0l@spike,

[snip]

>
> > If the council are to undertake the management of Gentoo, its terms
> > of reference need to be drastically altered to allow them to
> > undertake the management process defined above.
> >
> > In short, Gentoo has a top level power vacuum, allowing what
> > amounts to the 'power struggle 'we see today.
>
> This is the best reading of the situation I've seen, IMO.  Good work!
>
> Whether changing the rules to allow the council to manage
> appropriately is politically doable or not remains an open question,
> and I'm not even sure I'd back it myself if it is possible, but
> that's the best description of where we are at that I've seen, which
> means we've gone along way toward accomplishing the first step in any
> good debate, a proper definition of the issue.
>
> --
> Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
> "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
> and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list
>
>

Changing the councils terms of reference is the easy bit. My
understanding is that under the present rules, it needs a GLEP to be
approved by the council, However, the rules only permit things to
happen. In a volunteer organisation, management is a particularly
thankless task, it can't be done with a carrot and a stick, the stick
does just not exist and the carrot is a bit small too.

Luckily 90% of management decisions can be purely arbitrary - all that
matters is that a decision is made. In most of these cases, its fine to
allow the recommendation from the teams to prevail, they will be doing
the work after all. Its the other 10% that cause all the friction,
where some individuals or group are going to be upset whatever decision
is made.

If the ruling body (Council ?) were a proactive planning body, rather
than a reactive adjudication body, many of these things would we seen
coming - they would not be the surprises they are today, which is what
upsets protagonists. Planning is not really the councils job.

I've just convinced myself that what's needed is a new Gentoo wide
project - Gentoo Planning that takes input from all the teams as to
what they want to do by when and collates it in an attempt to spot
potential conflicts. Gentoo Planning can then alert the parties to
allow a discussion to take place and refer any failures to agree to the
council.

Its more admin - and I hate admin ... but to trot out an old adage,
"if you don't have a plan, then plan to fail" is very true.

All this proposal amounts to is formalising the communications amongst
the teams - maybe a gentoo-planning mailing list would be adequate, to
which all teams posted plans and progress reports on a regular basis
and which was compulsory reading. Regular being defined by each team
from time to time, depending on planned activity.

Maybe gentoo-planning is a devrel subproject, since its concernded  ?

Regards,

Roy Bamford

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