Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Trying to become a Gentoo Developer again spanning 8 years...

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 12:20 PM, William L. Thomson Jr.
<wlt-ml@××××××.com> wrote:
> On Monday, October 3, 2016 11:47:11 AM EDT Rich Freeman wrote:
>>
>> Well, if you have a problem with Comrel you might try following the
>> official process before starting a mailing list discussion.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure one of the quizzes has a question about how to handle
>> disputes/etc for exactly this reason.
>
> That has been part of my problem. I disagree with such questions, the answers,
> so can get hung up on those questions on the quiz. Why one review took 2 hours
> and did not max it past the 10th question on the 1st of 3 quizzes.

Your agreement with the question isn't really the concern.  Your
understanding of the correct answer, and willingness to comply with it
is.

There are Gentoo policies I personally disagree with.  I still comply
with these policies.  If I didn't comply with policy I'd expect to be
called out on it.  If policies are bad they can be changed, and I have
more of a say in that than most, but it isn't like I can just make the
policies anything I want them to be.

>
>> The only general advice I can offer to people who have had past
>> brushes with Comrel is to:
>> 1.  Acknowledge the importance of demonstrating that you can work with
>> others.  (If you can't do that, you probably won't be admitted.)
>> 2.  Work to demonstrate that you can indeed work well with others
>> today, regardless what may or may not have been a problem in the past.
>
> Are both of these not assumed when a mentor opens a bug for a contributor to
> become a developer?
>
> Is  the mentor not confirming the person can work with others, as in them at
> minimum. Likely the mentor has seen them work with others as well.
>
> Why does the mentor not factor in at all here?

If the mentor didn't think you would work out, you wouldn't even be
talking to the recruiters.

The general way things have worked is that any dev can be a mentor,
and then to assure quality we have a smaller pool of recruiters to
ensure that consistent standards are applied to new recruits, since
the pool of all developers is much larger.  I've heard that in the
past there were quality concerns when this wasn't done, and of course
back in the very early days of Gentoo the pool of developers was much
smaller and being essentially a dictatorship issues were dealt with
more expediently.

It wasn't any different when I joined Gentoo.  I had two mentors and a
recruiter, and while the process with the recruiter was somewhat
redundant, it wasn't particularly onerous.

>> I'm not going to pass judgment on any individual without having all
>> the facts.  However, as a matter of principle I certainly believe that
>> is important that prospective devs demonstrate that they're able to
>> work well with others in the community.  If somebody believes they've
>> truly done this and Comrel just isn't getting it, well, they can
>> appeal.  If they're going to appeal on the argument that being able to
>> work well with others doesn't matter, well, that is their right, but
>> my sense is that it is unlikely to get them far.
>
> Where does the mentor come into play? Are they not vouching for the
> individual?

I'm sure their words carry weight, but they may not be aware of
whatever issues Comrel has, and they may have different priorities.

Ultimately if you want to rejoin Gentoo you're going to have to
convince either Comrel or the Council that you're not going to create
trouble.

>
>> And as I've pointed out, there are a fair number of people who have
>> made significant contributions as non-developers.  Anybody can offer
>> pull requests of Java (or other project) ebuilds at any time, and a
>> developer can merge them in.
>
> So why is stuff sitting in GitHub PRs? Why did stuff sit in bugs for years?
> Why is stuff still in tree I was seeking to remove in 2008?

You would need to ask the developers you want to commit it for you.
It sounds like a few have spoken up in the thread about being
interested in Java contributions, so I'm sure they'd be willing to
work with you to commit any ebuilds you provide.

>
> Any comments along the lines of you can contribute to Gentoo Java from the
> outside. Is making that comments from an uneducated uninformed position. Go
> look into the details. The reality may shock you. Its VERY bad, for a VERY
> long period of time. It will take MASSIVE amounts of work. ~5-10 Java devs.
>

That doesn't surprise me, and nobody is against having more Java devs.
Or more Gentoo recruiters for that matter (there have been calls for
more people to volunteer to help with that as well.  In the end we're
a volunteer-based or and we need to work with what we have, but that
doesn't mean we don't need the Code of Conduct, because that just
drives away a lot of other people.

-- 
Rich