Re: [gentoo-project] Council meeting 2021-07-11 - call for agenda items

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 5:20 AM Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:
>
> The agenda is still open for additional items that the council should
> discuss or vote on. For agenda items, please respond to this message
> on the gentoo-project mailing list.
>

Short version of request: can action be taken to re-align IRC nicks
with Gentoo uids?  (Those with common sense should stop reading here.)

Longer version: since everything needs discussion, bikeshedding, and
actionable resolutions for the council to pass...

I'd like the council to vote on one of the following, or some other
approach, preferably to get IRC/email/usernames to match once more:

* On 2021-08-01 the LDAP user database will be queried to compare
their IRC nickname to uid/email addresses.  If these do not match,
then the developer will lose their IRC cloak and all IRC roles on
Gentoo channels, and will not be eligible to obtain these again until
the IRC nickname matches.

* On 2021-08-01 the LDAP user database will be queried to compare
their IRC nickname to uid/email addresses.  If these do not match,
then a process will be initiated to change their Gentoo uid/email to
match their newly chosen IRC nickname.

* On 2021-08-01 the LDAP user database will be queried to compare
their IRC nickname to uid/email addresses.  If these do not match,
then the retirement process for that developer will commence.  Users
who are unable to obtain a matching nick should contact <foo> to have
this addressed with Libera/Infra prior to this date.

* The Council recognizes that during the transition to Libera a number
of individuals decided to change their IRC nicks and this is causing
confusion.  The council kindly asks all developers to voluntarily
re-align their nicks and Gentoo uids so that it is not necessary to
endure further requests asking us to address this problem.

* The Council recognizes that during the transition to Libera a number
of individuals decided to change their IRC nicks and this is causing
confusion as to what Gentoo policy is on this matter.  There is no
requirement that Gentoo uids and IRC nicks match, and any dev is free
to change their IRC nick and register the new one in LDAP.  The public
Gentoo developer list will be updated to list the IRC username of each
developer to help everybody identify who is who, and everybody is
encouraged to keep the list handy as it will likely change frequently.

Rationale: I do not believe that recruiters would accept a new
developer's request to have a uid that doesn't match their nick on
IRC.  I suspect that recruiters also screen these nicks for
acceptability.  It doesn't make sense to have these suddenly diverge,
but only for a handful of existing developers whose IDs used to match,
but not for new devs going forward.  The current state is confusing at
best.  I do not pretend that all of these options are equally pretty
to implement from either a people or technical standpoint, and if
somebody has a better way to accomplish the goal by all means speak
up...

Obviously it would be best to just have devs fix this on their own
initiative, and I hate that this even has to be brought up ... again.
Perhaps devs holding leadership roles can lead the way.

Alternatively, if the intent is to just take advantage of the fact
that table lookups are cheap, at least for devs who are lacking
humanity, then just say so in order that we can stop talking about
it...

(FWIW, it is getting late, and some items above are intended as
genuine humor because not everything around here needs to be grim.
Now I'm off to sleep where I can hopefully dream up some more creative
IRC nicks...)

-- 
Rich