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

[Aaron Bauman]

On Tuesday, June 26, 2018 10:37:00 AM EDT Christopher Díaz Riveros wrote:
> El mar, 26-06-2018 a las 09:11 +0200, Michał Górny escribió:
> > Hello, everyone.
> >
> > Since the nominees for the new Council aren't eager to publish
> > manifestos, and nobody seems to be asking questions (yet some people are
> > leaving hostile half-comments), I'd like to start a thread dedicated to
> > asking the nominees (who accepted) questions related to their views of
> > the upcoming term.  At the same time, I'd like to ask all nominees to
> > answer all the questions provided by community members.
> >
> > I have started a more detailed page about nominees [1], and I will be
> > adding answers to the questions there.  Please note that I will try to
> > summarize them to shortly fit into the table.  If someone doesn't like
> > my summary, please let me know what to put there.  That said, if someone
> > thinks there's another kind of useful metadata to add to the table, I'd
> > appreciate that as well.
> >
> > To improve readability of the thread, I'll ask my question in reply to
> > myself ;-).
> >
> > Also, please keep the nominees in CC, in case they don't subscribe to
> > gentoo-project.
> >
> > [1]:https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:MGorny/Council_elections_2018
>
> Sounds like a good idea, here are my questions:
>
> What do council-nominees think about the current lack of manpower in Gentoo
> as a whole, and how do you propose to confront this situation, with facts?
>

I cannot speak historically (>3 years) of what may or may not have been a lack 
of manpower, but in recent years I would agree that there is a lack of 
manpower.

I do believe there are efforts to address this coming from our own developers.  

One such example is Michał's (mgorny) efforts with Github as the conduit.  His 
automation, CI bot, and personal involvement has shown fruit in the form of 
new developers (sbraz as an example).  Such avenues like this can be exploited 
to bridge the gap of "getting involved" within Gentoo.  The ease of 
contribution, abiity to review, and ultimately incorporate the changes offered 
by users is conducive to public satisfaction and positive PR.

Furthermore, I have had the opportunity to see some of the flyers and other 
"swag" given out at such events as FOSDEM.  This is a traditional approach, 
but highly effective.  It also lends to estabilishing the personal aspect of 
meeting other's who share a similair interest.  My intent is to begin this 
same effort in the United States (mostly my area) as I do not believe it is as 
prevalent as Europe.  I do not have anything empirical to validate this so it 
is pure perception.

> In the same line that previous question, what global decisions do you
> consider necessary in order to solve the manpower issue?
>

I discussed it prior to this question, but I think that ultimately the current 
efforts scaled properly would address these concerns.

> Finally, and this is just a personal opinion, right now I see many devs
> trying to pull Gentoo to different sides, but what I can't see is a set of
> common beliefs that join us all in the same vision of what Gentoo should be
> or do in the near future... how could you address this issue?
>

I understand how you would perceive that the distribution is being pulled in 
many different directions, but I would offer that many of our developers are 
passionate in their commitment to the distribution.  This leads to their 
passion sometimes lending to heated discussions and very opinionated 
conversation.  I view it as a sign of health.  It is not simply a hobby for 
them to develop within Gentoo, but their contributions become an investment.

For those contributing from their place of work (we have many "paid" 
developers within Gentoo) Gentoo should be a solid investment.  As such, I 
believe it would be noble of us as a council and distribution to set forth 
clear goals ensuring the health of the distribution.

Some things that come to mind:

Ensuring the recruitment of new developers is a priority.  This would include 
reviewing not only our PR efforts, but also ensuring a modern and effective 
approach is made to screen them.  Some have expressed that the developer quiz 
is an antiquated process.  While I believe this has merit, I do not believe it 
can be entirely exempted.  I do believe we could rely on "letting the code do 
the talking" more.  Especially with platforms allowing individuals to 
contribute and have reviews done.  This also does not absolve simple reviews 
such as the purpose of mailing lists etc.  Good developers are not only 
technically savvy, but also socially pleasant.

> And if you don't consider this an issue, because of being a community-driven
> project etc, how else do you explain the lack of public information about
> what Gentoo has done to improve the issues it had 8~10 years ago? If you
> search Gentoo in google, besides our official pages, there are a bunch of
> articles addressing Gentoo issues that seem to be old but are not "solved"
> properly anywhere. Right now I have to go to work, but I'll try to add some
> references later today or when requested.
>
> Best regards,

Yes, please reply with some references.  I have an idea of the type of 
articles you are probably reading.  If those are similair, I would offer that 
many can be biased or simply not important factors.  Gentoo has had it's ups 
an down over the years just as any distro has.  I have been a user for nearly 
15 years and experienced this from afar in most cases.  Bootstrapping from 
stage 1's and all sorts of fun.

-Aaron