Re: [gentoo-nfp] Next meeting; a motion to have 1 type of Gentoo member.

[Sven Vermeulen]

On Sun, Nov 06, 2016 at 06:32:59PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
>    The foundation currently has 1 member type (in the bylaws) but Gentoo
>    itself still seems to have 2 (Gentoo staff and Ebuild developer)
>    This motion represents an idea that the community itself would only
>    have 1 contributor type.
>    1) Contributors must take the staff quiz (which we should rename to the
>    contributor quiz.)
>    2) Contributors are encouraged to be foundation members, but membership
>    is not required. We may amend the contributor onboarding process to
>    offer foundation membership at the time they join Gentoo as a
>    contributor.
>    3) Contributors that want access to the gentoo ebuild repository still
>    need to follow the normal recruiting process (ebuild quiz, mentor, 30
>    day period.)
>    4) Contributors that do not want access to the gentoo ebuild repository
>    (because they contribute in other ways) do not need to take the ebuild
>    quiz. Its unclear if a 30 day grace period is required for non-ebuild
>    groups.
>    5) Existing developers and staff are rebranded as contributors.
>    If approved, I expect a few months of working with comrel to adjust
>    existing policy documents and recruiting guidelines to implement.

The difference between Staff and Developer is "merely" that a Developer has
access to the Portage tree (and as such can influence system behavior of
Gentoo users). Staff are still developers, they work on other aspects of the
distribution, such as core documentation, infrastructure, release
engineering, forum maintenance, etc.

I would not appreciate an intake for contributors. Many wiki contributors
(which offer a wealth of documentation information) would be affected by
this, which they will see as bureaucratic stuff. Same with proxy maintained
packages. Those contributors are no staff, yet they provide valuable
improvements to Gentoo.

If we would want to align Gentoo Project user-types and Foundation, then we
are moving the project management into Foundation space a bit. Currently,
the Foundation has always tried not to meddle within this. I am not opposed
to making things a bit easier for both though (for instance, all staff and
developers are automatically Gentoo Foundation members).

Wkr,
	Sven Vermeulen