Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-dev] Special meeting [WAS: Council meeting summary for 8 May 2008]

[Richard Freeman]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Sun, 18 May 2008 11:26:00 -0400
> "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@g.o> wrote:
>>> Unfortunately, it seems that people are misinterpreting this -- it
>>> might have been better to document it as 'The Council's
>>> Constitution' or somesuch...
>> That would have been better. Also if the GLEP went into more detail,
>> and had other provisions. Like stripping the council of their power
>> in a situation like this one. Presently till replaced, if replaced,
>> they still have full power to decide upon global issues.
>
> The problem is, none of this was written under the assumption that the
> Council would try to misbehave and avoid following the rules...
>

Uh - perhaps we should save our zealotry for constitutions for some time 
when the Council is actually misbehaving?  This really seems like a 
tempest in a teapot.

If the council decided to start holding meetings in private, denied any 
forum for dissent, began booting people merely for disagreeing, and 
began taking the distro in a direction most devs don't like then I'd be 
all for having a gentoo insurrection.

It seems like the general consensus on this discussion is that the worst 
offense committed by the council was to miss a meeting time, and that as 
a result we have to go through a new election process immediately.  I 
can probably think of a half-dozen issues that would be of benefit to 
Gentoo if the council showed strong leadership, and punishing itself for 
missing a meeting really doesn't end up on that list.

Honestly - I think that Gentoo is about as strong as I've seen it in 
recent days of late.  The trustees are steadily cleaning house, the 
mailing lists have been almost entirely flame-free (even this discussion 
is managing to stay relatively cordial), and very contentious issues 
like PMS or alternate package managers have actually been discussed 
fairly enthusiastically on -dev of late.  I haven't seen too many people 
roasted on bugzilla for making mistakes lately either.  Are we just so 
used to having some kind of major clash in Gentoo that we feel the need 
to invent one since it has been dull for a few months?

Gentoo is a community of moderate size.  If we had thousands of devs I'd 
be concerned about having a constitution of sorts so that a small 
minority doesn't get trampled by a majority.  At its present size, 
however, just about any dev is free to do all kinds of stuff with the 
distro as long as they don't risk major breakage.  Gosh - we have one of 
the two major desktop environment herds running in an overlay that uses 
an EAPI that I assume isn't even supported by portage.  I think we're 
starting to see signs of new innovation and that is a good thing for 
Gentoo - we've always tended to be a fairly conceptually cutting-edge 
distro that still manages to "just work".

I think that what has led to these recent developments is a realization 
that technical achievement can only exist when we foster an environment 
where people can contribute while still having fun and not getting 
skewered.  I think that a little bit of leniency and practical common 
sense has to go with that.  If we go back to bashing people over the 
head with policies just because we have something to point to 
demonstrating that we're right and somebody else is wrong, then I think 
we'll be giving up some of what we've gained in the last 9 months or so.
-- 
gentoo-project@l.g.o mailing list