Re: [gentoo-project] Groups under the Council or Foundation: the structure & processes thereof

[Raymond Jennings]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 5:46 PM, Raymond Jennings <shentino@×××××.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@g.o>
> wrote:
>
>> Am Donnerstag, 13. Oktober 2016, 01:30:23 schrieb Robin H. Johnson:
>>
>>>  TL;DR: move comrel, infra, PR to Foundation.
>>>
>>
>> No. For the following reasons not:
>>
>> In the past the foundation trustees have shown to be fairly detached from
>> the
>> Gentoo daily life, and as a consequence happily added known troublemakers
>> to
>> the foundation membership list.
>> This is not a body qualified have oversight of the developer community in
>> any
>> way.
>>
>
> If the foundation is truly detached from the community of developers
> maintaining the very Gentoo it is meant to
>
> I think we should do an audit of the foundation's members, seeing how many
> of them are attached to gentoo and care about it, how many don't care.  If
> there truly is "dead weight" on the council


I meant foundation, not council.  Got confused here.


> , or worse, toxic troublemakers, then the foundation's membership ought to
> be trimmed.  If that's NOT the case, then finding out how much they really
> do care about Gentoo should give us confidence in them.
>
> Ostensibly though its the foundation's job to care about gentoo, and
> if/when the foundation's membership is rightsized and pruned (if needed) I
> would deem them worthy of the trust to handle those oversight roles.
>
> -------------------------
>
> Regarding the chicken and egg post earlier:
>
> There may also be a potential chicken-egg-fox triangle
>
> A) comrel can remove developres
> B) council oversees comrel/appeals of comrel cases
> C) developers elect council
>
> Put these three together and we have a potential feedback loop.  For this
> reason I also support out-of-the-loop oversight.
>
> The fact that devs elect council, and council handles comrel appeals,
> effectively means that comrel, at least in theory, has the ability to
> control, even if indirectly,  the composition of any oversight it gets.
>
> I would far rather have comrel supervised by someone
> (individual/group/whatever) with a vested interest in the welfare of the
> gentoo community, and who would continue to have that vested interest
> regardless of any politics that happens among the develoeprs and/or council
> and/or comrel.
>
> By acclamation, I would assume that "ideal overseer" would be the
> foundation itself.  If I remember my dev quiz right, foundation membership
> is open to those who have demonstrated a faithful support of gentoo's
> interests...of which becoming a dev is only one method among many to prove
> such faithfulness.
>
> The ability of comrel to involuntarily retire developers (who elect
> council) is what concerns me about a potential feedback loop.
>
> As far as infra, they should be overseen by the foundation as well.  If
> I'm not mistaken, gentoo assets are owned by the foundation (thus saith dev
> quiz), and I presume that would include the physical server hardware as
> well as the copyrights etc.    So legally, they have a vested interest in
> ensuring that their server hardware assets are properly managed, and that
> IMO would give them the prerogative of exercising oversight over the infra
> team.
>
> My opinion overall is thus:
>
> 1.  The project structure works well at keeping tabs on who is responsible
> for what, and does good at keeping things organized.
> 2.  Having project leads and project members with oversight of each other
> keeps the project with a cohesive leadership, and keeps the project united
> as a team
> 3.  Some "projects", however, are special because they ahve powers and/or
> responsiblities that go beyond mere software or ebuild.
> 4.  Because of point 3, I think some projects should be special cases.
> Included but not limited to comrel, infra, PR, recruiters, comres.
> 5.  Related to point 4, I think that said projects should be directly
> overseen by the foundation.  At the very least, the leads of said projects
> should be subject to oversight by the foundation, and not merely the
> existing project members or the council.
>
> Even if the foundation isn't ideal, at the very least the above "projects"
> should be flagged as special cases that should not be subject to the
> mundane procedures that apply to "normal" projects.
>
>