Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Council nominee 2018/19 questions

[Mart Raudsepp]

Ühel kenal päeval, K, 27.06.2018 kell 10:25, kirjutas Michał Górny:
> 1. Do you believe that Council members should respect the requests of
> the developer community even if they disagree with them?  Or should
> Council members decide based on their own judgment of arguments
> presented?

Council members should decide based on their own judgment, after having
put in sufficient thought, research and opinions of the developer
community.

This is how such election based bodies generally work, really, as K_F
has already expressed.
You vote for someone you believe to have similar views and trust them
to make thought out decisions, while advocating for what you want when
you feel strongly towards it, but not having to worry about it
otherwise, as there's someone you voted to do it for you.

Example: there's a heated debate, and the majority of respondents
> request that X is implemented.  However, after reading all the
> arguments
> you don't think that X is a good idea but you haven't managed to
> convince others.  Would you vote for X (as your electorate demands)
> or against it (as you believe is better for the distro)?

Just following requests from developer community leads to issues like
rubber stamping vocal minority, voting without research and thought. An
elected persons job is to serve the electorate that voted for him/her.
The election is anonymous, so you should assume you got voted in by
people who believe your judgment is good for their views and for the
elected body as a whole. Not a potential vocal minority, spur of the
moment topics and so on.

If this is truly a high majority that wants the decision to be
implement, then a simple majority of council members will almost surely
think the same.
If not, there will be the option to adjust your votes distribution next
time.
In many other places the terms are much longer than a year (e.g. 4-7
years in democratic politics), and in the grand scheme of things,
things work. 1 year is much less. I don't see how just rubber stamping
a _perceived_ majority does us any good.


>
> 2. Do you believe that the Council should proactively research the
> state
> of affairs and make decisions whenever they believe the direction
> of the distribution needs to be adjusted?  Or should it be passive
> and avoid involvement unless developers explicitly request Council's
> intervention?

As I've expressed in my last years manifesto as well[1], I believe the
council members should be leaders in Gentoo, individually. That means
being proactive, finding global issues, describing them, empowering
people to fix it, etc. This isn't something that needs one to be a
member of the council, but I think it's the kind of people we need on
the council.
However council as a whole (in particular its voting) should be a
backup when consensus seeking fails, or really global matters need the
technical review decision (e.g. EAPIs).

> 3. Do you believe the developer community should hold the power
> to veto or dissolve the Council at any point?  Provided there's a
> global
> developer vote agreeing on that.

Given the 1 year only term and the potential for the next council to
overturn things, I'm not sure it's something very important. However if
such a thing is done, it should not be based on a majority of those who
voted, but either a majority of eligible voters or a super-majority
(66%, 75%, something like that) of who vote.

We don't want to end up with every decision questioned and a general
developer vote called for all of them. Gentoo developers want to spend
their scarce free time improving Gentoo, not cast votes.

Regarding a general vote, I think there are places for it, e.g. the
council itself decides it needs global input from all developers to
make a decision that isn't otherwise clear (especially cases where
opinion matters a lot, while being a rather important decision to make
overall too).


[1] https://dev.gentoo.org/~leio/council/manifesto-2017.txt


Mart