1 |
On Sun, Jun 20, 2021 at 2:40 PM David Seifert <soap@g.o> wrote: |
2 |
> |
3 |
> Nominees, |
4 |
> congratulations on your nominations! As part of this year's elections, |
5 |
> I'd like to pose five questions to the nominees, that I believe are |
6 |
> important factors in considering someone a good candidate for the |
7 |
> council: |
8 |
> |
9 |
> 1. Do you feel you have enough time to commit to serving as a Gentoo |
10 |
> council member in the 2021/2022 term? Does your commit activity support |
11 |
> this? If you served in 2020/2021, have you prepared for council meetings |
12 |
> and finished all unfinished business for which you were responsible (as |
13 |
> a council member)? |
14 |
|
15 |
Yes. |
16 |
|
17 |
I have some concerns about the sustainability of my contribution level |
18 |
now that I'm also maintaining GNOME, but yes, if I'm elected to |
19 |
Council I will make it a priority. Council's not just a personal |
20 |
responsibility that, if neglected, only affects you. Truthfully, |
21 |
Council is a much smaller time commitment than some of my other |
22 |
responsibilities in Gentoo, and I don't have any concerns about my |
23 |
ability or capacity to handle Council responsibilities. |
24 |
|
25 |
I don't have any unfinished Council business from my first year on Council. |
26 |
|
27 |
> 2. Project X and Project Y have irreconcilable differences, but you |
28 |
> aren't involved with any of the projects. A crucial technical decision |
29 |
> needs to be made. How will you react? Will you defer? Do you consider |
30 |
> abstaining a viable option for the group of people making decisions as a |
31 |
> last resort? |
32 |
|
33 |
It can seem there are irreconcilable differences even when there's |
34 |
not, given some styles of debate... |
35 |
|
36 |
For sake of argument, let's say the differences truly are irreconcilable. |
37 |
|
38 |
Who has the track record of successfully completing projects? Which |
39 |
project do we expect to provide more value for the distribution? |
40 |
|
41 |
Abstaining in such a case doesn't really make sense to me. After all, |
42 |
if the issue has been brought to the Council, it's because people want |
43 |
us to make a decision! Even if I'm not a user of either project in the |
44 |
disagreement it's still my responsibility as a Council member to |
45 |
become informed and to make the best decision possible. |
46 |
|
47 |
Deferring makes sense when we have reason to believe that we'll be in |
48 |
a better position to make a decision later. I don't know who said it |
49 |
but I appreciate the quote, "When the facts change, I change my mind. |
50 |
What do you do?". If we're just going to rehash the same discussion |
51 |
with no additional information in next month's Council meeting, we |
52 |
might as well save ourselves the headache and make the decision today. |
53 |
|
54 |
> 3. Given your typical area of responsibility, how have you performed? |
55 |
|
56 |
I think I've performed well. RelEng is chugging along, I'm still |
57 |
improving things as time allows. X11 packages are all up to date. I |
58 |
got GNOME 40 into the tree (and stabilized) and that seems to have |
59 |
made a lot of users happy: |
60 |
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/nc6u1v/gnome_40_available_in_gentoo/ |
61 |
|
62 |
> 4. What positive change/idea/plan do you have for Gentoo that you would |
63 |
> try to further (not necessarily as a council member)? By positive change |
64 |
> I mean actually changing something concrete, not some diffuse notion of |
65 |
> "improving how the council acts" or non-tangible deliverable. |
66 |
|
67 |
I'm really interested to continue improving our RelEng build tools |
68 |
(catalyst, automation scripts). They're currently pretty confusing to |
69 |
set up, and I've got a handful of ideas (and a GSoC student!) that |
70 |
will make them a lot simpler to use. Gentoo's all about being able to |
71 |
customize your system by building from source, and so it's always been |
72 |
kind of strange to me that it's so difficult to build your own stage |
73 |
tarball or LiveCD image. |
74 |
|
75 |
I'm now employed by Google working on the ChromeOS graphics team. |
76 |
Though my job isn't specifically related to the Gentoo-bits in |
77 |
ChromeOS, I do think it's an area that I can help with. I'm going to |
78 |
work to upstream fixes from the chromiumos-overlay to Gentoo, and I'd |
79 |
love to get more ChromeOS Googlers contributing directly to ::gentoo. |
80 |
ChromeOS uses a lot of cross compilation infrastructure that most |
81 |
developers don't exercise, so it seems like an area ripe for |
82 |
improvement with benefits to both Gentoo and ChromeOS. |
83 |
|
84 |
> 5. Do you think the council should be more agile - i.e. take decisions |
85 |
> for the purpose of propelling Gentoo forward, rather than waiting for |
86 |
> the decision to be made for it? Would you consider a small number of |
87 |
> departing views on the mailing list or IRC to be enough to derail a |
88 |
> proposal? When do you consider a controversial issue to have been |
89 |
> discussed enough? |
90 |
|
91 |
Quoting my manifesto: Consensus need not be unanimous. |
92 |
|
93 |
I think a Council member should be involved in finding and/or building |
94 |
consensus around an issue. That means listening to those you disagree |
95 |
with! Reasonable people can disagree and still get along, and drilling |
96 |
down to find the difference in priorities and/or judgement gives you a |
97 |
better understanding of the issue. |
98 |
|
99 |
It seems to me that you know when a discussion has run its course when |
100 |
you start seeing the same points made and remade. Again quoting my |
101 |
manifesto: the purpose of a discussion is not for others to hear your |
102 |
point. Restated, the purpose of the discussion is to understand the |
103 |
issue. I think we should all have the maturity to acknowledge when an |
104 |
issue is understood, that it's not valuable to continue to try to |
105 |
drive your point into the other person's skull. |
106 |
|
107 |
Thanks a bunch for your questions! |