[gentoo-nfp] [RFC] Alternative methods for determining 'interest in Foundation affairs'

[Michael Everitt]

On 06/09/19 15:36, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 05, 2019 at 06:51:00PM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 5, 2019 at 6:42 PM Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@g.o> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Sep 05, 2019 at 01:45:25PM -0700, Alec Warner wrote:
>>>>> 3. It is really meaningless.  Casting a vote does not really indicate
>>>>> any interest in GF.  It only indicates that someone has done the minimal
>>>>> effort to avoid being kicked.  There is no reason to conflate the two.
>>>> I'm certainly interested in other avenues of interest, but I don't see very
>>>> many in this thread other than "AGM attendance" and "asking people if they
>>>> are interested[0]"
>>> - Does involvement on mailing lists count?
>>> - What other ways outside development might somebody be involved in
>>>   Gentoo? Not everybody is a developer, let alone an ebuild developer.
>>>   What if we wound up with PR people who weren't devs at all, but loved
>>>   to talk about Gentoo?
>> Gentoo developers do not have to have commit access.  If somebody is
>> doing significant PR work for Gentoo then they should be made a
>> developer.  Developers do not need to pass the ebuild quiz.
> I meant "developer" as the generic "one who develops software".
> Ebuilds are not the only code-like activity, there's multiple other
> software packages that Gentoo relies on: openrc, netifrc, genkernel,
> catalyst, eselect are some of them.
> They may have commit access to those packages, and not to ebuilds.
>
> I need to distinguish between:
> - ebuild coding contribution
> - non-ebuild-coding contribution
> - non-coding contribution
>
>> Anybody with an @g.o email address is a developer.
>>
>> We used to use the term "staff" but anybody who used to be considered
>> "staff" is now considered a "developer."
> I stated when the switch away from "staff" was done, that I felt we were
> doing ourselves a dis-service by not picking a better word than
> "developer" - something that includes all of the contributions above,
> without implying specific technical skills. "Contributor" was down-voted
> at the time.
>
Reading (somewhat extensively) between the lines, there is a subtle move
for those developing code and ebuilds to "take over" control and management
of the distribution (cf. electorate of 'council'). Whether this is
something that is (1) really happening or (2) desirable, I shall leave as
an exercise for the reader; but I thought was probably worth highlighting.