Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Social Contract, Council: please fix the mess you cause

[Daniel Robbins]

Hey klondike,

I am looking at the social contract and the only place that
gentoo-dev@l.g.o is in the introductory paragraph:

"This social contract is intended to clearly describe the overall
development policies and standards of the Gentoo project development team.
Parts of this document have been derived from the Debian Social Contract.
It is generally very similar to it except that certain parts have been
clarified and augmented while other parts deemed redundant have been
removed. Comments are welcome. Please send them to our
gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list."

It's not actually in the social contract itself.

At one point, maybe these last three sentences of the intro paragraph were
appropriate, like when the social contract was a new thing and more of a
work in progress.

I would recommend the following changes. Replace the last three sentences
of the introductory paragraph with something similar to the following:

"Potential improvements to the social contract should be submitted to the
Gentoo Linux bug tracker at https://bugs.funtoo.org, and assigned to
gentoo-trustees. Specific questions about social contract, and discussion
about potential future improvements can be posted to the gentoo-project
mailing list."

This is fair. First, it removes an attribution to Debian. I think our
social contract has evolved to the point where it's now its own thing?
(Maybe I'm wrong on this point) And it tightens up the wording to make it
clear that our social contract is not in a "hey -- tell us what you think"
stage. And yet we do have a clear process for formal changes (bug tracker)
and general discussion and questions (gentoo-project).

-Daniel

On Sun, Mar 25, 2018 at 6:40 PM, Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera (klondike) <
klondike@g.o> wrote:

> Dear Gentoo Council,
>
> During the meeting you held on December (see the logs here:
> https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20171210.txt ), you
> voted for restricting the gentoo-dev mailing list. Although in said meeting
> somebody raised that such a change affected the Gentoo Social Contract as
> it referred users to provide comments on the gentoo-dev mailing list (see
> https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contract.html ) this
> was dismissed by one of your members (which has, in the past, called the
> Gentoo Social Contract "dead law") by saying that the right place to send
> such comments is gentoo-project (but willingly ignoring that such a
> reference has been part of it since the first archived draft version
> https://web.archive.org/web/20021112053724/http://www.
> gentoo.org:80/main/en/contract.xml and the first non draft version
> https://web.archive.org/web/20031203222653/http://www.
> gentoo.org:80/main/en/contract.xml which predate the gentoo-project
> mailing list) and apparently ignored by the rest.
>
> This was noted after the vote had happened and to the best of my knowledge
> hadn't been raised before. Despite that, on the next meeting where the
> topic was discussed a different council member stated that said person did
> not "any pertinent new information since last vote".
>
> Now, three months after, no action has been carried by the council on this
> very specific regard despite being made aware of it. This clearly shows
> that the current council members not only take hastened decissions without
> even doing propper research, they don't try to clean up the mess they cause
> after their own decissions.
>
> Given the inaction by the council, I'm propossing to apply either of these
> two changes to the Gentoo Social contract.
>
> First propossal:
> Replace "Comments are welcome. Please send them to our
> gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list." by "Comments by selected
> people are welcome. Please send them to our gentoo-dev@l.g.o
> mailing list.". Which clearly reflects the new ivory tower philosophy the
> Council is making the Gentoo Project take.
>
> Second propossal:
> Replace "Comments are welcome. Please send them to our
> gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list." by "Comments by selected
> people are welcome. Please send them to our gentoo-project@lists.
> gentoo.org mailing list CCing the Gentoo Foundation trustees on
> trustees@l.g.o.". Which ensures trustees get a notification of
> such propossals and still keeps the social contract open to comments for
> anybody.
>
> Please note, in the spirit of the second propossal I'm CCing
> gentoo-project.
>
> Klondike
>