Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Council 2016 / 2017 election

[Daniel Campbell]

On 06/19/2016 05:04 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 1:44 AM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:
>>
>> So I guess maybe our protracted discussions and "slowness" is a good thing.
>>
>
> Do we REALLY have protracted discussions?  I guess it is all relative,
> but a typical Gentoo debate over some big change seems to last a week
> if whoever is pushing the proposal is actually moving forward
> actively.  Either a consensus forms or it doesn't.  If there is
> consensus they actually can move forward without Council approval,
> though some choose to wait for the next Council meeting anyway.  If
> there isn't consensus then we usually make a decision at the next
> meeting, unless the proposal just isn't quite ready yet.  Usually if
> it isn't ready it is fairly obvious in the discussion.  Hint: if you
> are sitting on this really great idea, waiting until a week before the
> Council meeting to broach the topic isn't ideal.
>
> Now, when somebody just throws an idea out there and maybe asks the
> Council if it is a good idea, but nobody is all that interested in
> implementing it, then obviously it will sit around forever.  We all
> probably have lots of good ideas.  There is no harm in bouncing them
> off the lists; maybe somebody will be inspired and implement it, or
> we'll come up with an even better idea.  However, in the end we have
> to recognize that a volunteer distro is the result of the stuff people
> have bothered to actually implement.
>
> Then there are the discussions that just keep coming up, but they're
> usually just discussions.  We can argue about whether A is better than
> B, but typically these discussions don't actually have any practical
> impact on how Gentoo is governed.  9/10 times we have some way to let
> A and B co-exist in the distro if anybody cares to put the work in,
> and whether one is better than the other certainly inspires passions
> but doesn't really impact repo policy.
>
> Now, if you want every idea to hit the ~arch tree two days after it is
> proposed, you're going to struggle to find any distro that can
> accommodate you.  Reasonable QA depends on all the developers
> following the same set of rules, and good luck with that if the rules
> are changing faster than anybody can stay on top of, likely including
> the QA team.  As annoying as talking about changes are, we talk about
> them because dealing with the aftermath of slowly working them out in
> production is far worse.
>
> Maybe I'm just out of touch (in which case somebody should cluebat me
> with some examples), but I feel like protracted discussions are
> something that we haven't really had in a while, at least not on
> technical matters.
>
Perhaps my tone was misread: I don't personally have any problems with
the way we do things. I think discussion is super important if we're
going to get volunteers to carry out change. As much as I don't like to
draw the similarity, it's kinda like work: workers won't want to do your
bidding or care unless they're invested and feel some level of autonomy.
The same is doubly so in a volunteer environment.

As for protracted discussions, it really depends on where you draw the
line at 'protracted'. Maybe a week isn't long enough for me to call
protracted. Maybe even 2 weeks isn't. Some of them *feel* protracted,
but again that's not always a bad thing, especially if the subject is
high-impact. Simply learning how other devs feel about a given idea
means something. Most of our discussions last about a week or two and
then fizzle, or smoothly go into the implementation or design phase,
where discussion's more concrete and actionable.

Just to be clear, I'm not complaining or including anything personal
here. It was an observation, nothing more. :)
-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
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