Re: [gentoo-project] Groups under the Council or Foundation: the structure & processes thereof

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 6:30 PM, Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@g.o> wrote:
> TL;DR: move comrel, infra, PR to Foundation. Have strict(er) application
> of policies to them in line with their powers.
>

While in an ideal world I can see the concept, I think this would be a
serious mistake in practice for a few reasons:

1.  I don't think we ought to be giving more power to the Foundation
until the Foundation membership is re-aligned with the distro
developer membership.  We essentially have two democratic
organizations with overlapping but different constituencies, and I'm
not sure Gentoo could survive if they start trying to pull the distro
in different directions since the community seems like it is barely
above critical mass as it is.

2.  The Foundation needs to focus first and foremost on keeping the
lights on.  Right now there are 10 periodic activities that the
Foundation needs to perform to be in compliance with the law/etc, and
according to the public records of the Foundation we're current on 6
of them.  Not all are equally important, and maybe we're just bad at
recordkeeping, but it isn't a great sign.  (
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:Activity_Tracker )

3.  I've yet to see any evidence that Comrel has actually done
anything wrong.  In recent days I've seen one appeal, in which there
was seen some need to improve things, but the conclusion was that they
basically came to the right decision.  If developers don't trust the
judgement of the Council on this they can always vote in a new
Council, but unless they elect people who are out to get rid of comrel
for the sake of doing so I am skeptical that they would come to a
different conclusion.  Unfortunately I can't talk about all the
allegations for those involved.  We also have an active thread where
somebody is complaining about Comrel but refuses to actually appeal,
and has commented in the thread that he thinks it is unlikely that his
appeal would be successful.

I think there is room for improvement here, but I think it would be a
mistake to do something drastic.

--
Rich