Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-core] Petteri Räty (betelgeuse) re-elected as Developer Relations Lead

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 1:00 AM, Ben de Groot <yngwin@g.o> wrote:
> Since Council functions also as a "court of appeal" for DevRel, I would
> like to see us adopt a policy that people cannot be a member of both
> Council and DevRel. This would avoid any possible conflict of interest.
>
> What do others think about this?

I've spoken out against this before and will do so again.

1.  The council is elected and therefore has a mandate.  If you don't
trust somebody to exercise appropriate judgment in this capacity you
shouldn't be voting for them.

2.  Devrel is important and excluding those who the community have
decided most capable of leading the organization from it is only going
to make it weaker.

I never really got the conflict of interest thing.  A conflict of
interest is when somebody's own personal interests are in conflict
with those of the organization they are supposed to represent.  If a
member of infra recommends that Gentoo buy hosting at some company
they do work on the side for, then that is a conflict of interest
(which isn't to say that they can't be on infra - just that they need
to be very up-front about such things - conflicts can be mitigated).

Members of devrel don't personally benefit from making disciplinary
decisions, at least not usually.  Neither do council members.

Now you could argue that such a policy would make devrel and the
council more independent, but I'd argue that they're probably too
independent as it  is.  In most organizations the leadership at the
top sets the direction, and it is the job of everybody else to do
their part to keep the ship moving in that direction.  The idea that
individual projects within Gentoo should be operating in complete
autonomy and the council shouldn't get involved unless asked is
basically saying that we place little value on central leadership
(well, except when things blow up and people start openly debating
whether we should have a benevolent dictator - talk about bipolar).

I'd say that if anything the policy should be that Devrel as a team
can elect a proposed leader, but that the council should be required
to confirm this recommendation, and that they should have the power to
completely ignore it and appoint anyone else.  That's certainly how
most organizations run - the HR department at work doesn't just pick
its own manager and tell the CEO to buzz off if they meddle too much.

If the council isn't simply upholding the decisions of Devrel 99% of
the time then something is very wrong.  If Devrel really isn't doing
its job right then fix it, don't let it muddle along dragging people
through a big process that they ignore on the hope that they'll get
everything reversed on appeal.

For those inclined to point to courts where appeals are handled by
"independent" panels of judges keep in mind this independence is often
an illusion.  The lower court actually is governed by the higher one,
and while there are different people involved the lower judges can
lose their jobs if the higher ones don't like their rulings too often.
 These bodies are not independent - the one is completely subservient
to the other in just about every way.  The lower court really only
exists since the higher one is too busy to handle every case directly.

Rich