Re: [gentoo-project] Representation of Gentoo on third-party platforms

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 2:43 AM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:
>
> Gentoo is ultimately better off if it takes its stance of
> non-involvement more seriously and butts out of any disputes until
> they affect Gentoo itself, i.e. commit wars, spam or harassment in
> IRC/forums, etc.

As far as I can tell that is basically the status quo.  About the only
times I've seen Comrel doing anything is when it involves fairly
serious issues that fall into the sorts of categories you describe
here.

Sure, the folks involved might go telling everybody they know that
they're being persecuted for whatever.  Since Gentoo does not disclose
why people are asked to leave, there is really nothing to contradict
their side of the story.  That is frustrating, but I don't think we
really have any reasonable alternatives.

> Why is comrel necessary? Do we not have policy documents outlining the
> consequences of violating the CoC?

This is like saying why do we need a kernel project when we have
documents explaining how the kernel gets maintained.

Comrel is the body that actually administers enforcement of the CoC.


> Removing comrel can reduce legal liability in that there _is_ no
> investigative team involved, no slander or libel to worry about.

When somebody goes doing "commit wars, spam or harassment in
IRC/forums, etc" how would you propose dealing with those problems
without having some sort of investigative team?

> Then
> there's the added bonus of those devs gaining free time to do things
> that they enjoy rather than listen to greivances and being expected to
> please two or more parties.

They're volunteers.  They're not forced to do anything.  Volunteer
resources generally aren't fungible.  If the Council said that MIPS is
a waste of time and the MIPS team is disbanded it isn't like they'd
just start spending the time they spend on MIPS on other Gentoo
projects.  They might leave Gentoo entirely, or work on something
completely different.  If having a MIPS team were actively harmful to
Gentoo it might still be the right call, but that is of course not the
case.

> Large problems can be pushed to the
> council, as they are already elected officials who are expected to make
> impactful decisions on Gentoo.

The way it works is that large problems get pushed to Comrel, and if
the people involved are dissatisfied with the results they can appeal
to Council.

I don't have a problem with Council handling Comrel the way it handles
QA.  I don't think it will improve things if the Council takes over
the role of Comrel entirely.  The Council is a governance body for
just about everything in the distro, it isn't staffed to run
everything directly.  If you let the Council delegate, then fine, but
now we basically are back to Comrel.

And in the end any really big decision that Comrel makes ultimately
makes its way through the Council if the person impacted thinks that
they're likely to disagree with Comrel.

> If an issue is not big or impactful
> enough to bring to the council, then the parties involved need to
> solve their conflict in other, hopefully more constructive ways.

That is already what they're supposed to do before bringing it to
Comrel.  From the few appeals I've seen that usually does tend to
happen to some degree, but if you're the victim of harassment and
somebody doesn't stop when politely asked to stop, then I don't think
we can expect much to come out of that.

> Third
> party platforms already have their own guidelines, so if someone is
> dissatisfied with Gentoo's action (or inaction), they can go to the
> platform moderators and we (Gentoo) don't need to be involved.

And what if the platform moderator doesn't do anything, and somebody
is the victim of harassment on a medium that bears our name and logo?
What happens when people start branding Gentoo with the sorts of bad
behavior that is occurring on that third party site?

And if you continue to do nothing, then good luck ever stopping
anybody who sets up an "Official Gentoo Website" or whatever with our
logo on it, because they'll just point to the various other third
party sites where we fail to take action, and a court can decide that
we've failed to protect our trademark and the Gentoo name is worthless
legally.  Then somebody gets upset and sues the Trustees for failure
to carry out their fiduciary duties and spoliation of assets.

>
> tldr: we should treat social disputes the same way we treat upstream
> software: modify it only when Gentoo functionality depends on it.
>

Well sure, and that is why people get to appeal to the Council.  I
can't think of any Council members who have been supportive of
significant Comrel actions when somebody hasn't done something
seriously wrong.  Now, I can't say who that sort of action has been
taken against, or what they've actually done seriously wrong, and I
get that this is going to make people suspicious.  I just can't think
of a way to do that without creating liability both for Gentoo and
myself.

There has been talk of reviving the Proctors to deal with more minor
stuff, basically empowering forum mods, IRC ops, and so on.

-- 
Rich