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On 04/20/2010 02:21 PM, Roy Bamford wrote: |
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> Thats an interesting concept that I only partly agree with. There is |
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> one Gentoo. True. The Council heads it up *techncially*. That's |
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> fairly important. If the council makes a bad decision on behalf of |
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> Gentoo, its the Foundation that gets sued and ultimately, the trustees |
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> who go to jail as they have legal responsibility for Gentoo. |
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I understand what you're getting at. |
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However, how do you draw the line? |
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It seems to me that the legal reality is that there is a Gentoo linux |
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distribution, which the Foundation graciously allows to use the name |
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"Gentoo", which tends to have overlapping membership, but which is |
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otherwise fairly independent. |
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Honestly, in most organizations there would simply be one board of |
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directors for the whole thing and that is that. This board would be the |
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final appeal for any matter whether legal, business, technical, human |
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resources, etc. Now, typically the board appoints people to oversee |
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these things on a day-to-day basis. If there are multiple boards there |
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is clear delineation of responsibility and authority, and often a |
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subordinate relationship. |
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In any case, my post wasn't really intended to speak to conflicts |
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between the trustees and the council. I was thinking more about |
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conflicts between project leads, random developers, etc, and the council. |
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The trustees and the Gentoo Foundation don't answer to the council. |
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However, just about all other aspects of the Gentoo distribution do. If |
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there is not consensus on this then we should make explicit which body |
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controls what - EVERYTHING in Gentoo should be subordinate to one of |
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these two bodies, and we should expect the appropriate body to deal with |
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messes that arise in their domain. |
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The main reason I wanted to try to make this explicit is that it seems |
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like I've seen numerous threads where people essentially argue that the |
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council doesn't have the right to decide this or that. Now, I can see |
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the legitimacy of this regarding GLEP 39 since the council does need to |
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answer to the dev body as a whole. However, I don't like the idea that |
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the council is somehow limited in how it gets involved with day-to-day |
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distribution matters because it is supposed to be a high and lofty body |
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that only gets to vote on very specific matters. Sure, as a practical |
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matter it makes more sense for the council to be an appeals court than a |
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first-line court, but to go from that to saying that the council can't |
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take action until after devrel does, or that the devrel lead can't be on |
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the council, or whatever just doesn't make sense to me. The council |
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should try to stay above the fray, but if it needs to step in and get |
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its hands dirty they have that authority. We elect them because we |
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think they'll have the discretion to do the right thing. |
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I also am not a big fan of the whole |
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can't-be-on-council-and-trustees-at-same-time bit either, but that is a |
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different issue. |
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I like what you said about being proactive. I don't see the sole |
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purpose of the Council to be voting on GLEPs. They are the leaders of |
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Gentoo, so they should lead. Of course, being a volunteer organization |
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there will be limits to what they can do in this regard. |
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