Re: [gentoo-project] Questions for Gentoo Council nominees: GLEP 76

[desultory]

On 06/30/19 14:53, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 12:48 AM desultory <desultory@g.o> wrote:
>>
>> On 06/28/19 08:09, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 7:49 AM Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@g.o> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I never stated that the trustees will know better, I stated that
>>>> their knowledge of what we assume to be real names will be
>>>> sufficient and there is no need for all developers to know them.
>>>> This is because the trustees are responsible for legal issues of
>>>> Gentoo.
>>>>
>>>> With such approach we lose nothing, but gain something valuable: we
>>>> may and will accept more people and more contributions.
>>>
>>> IMO you lose a professional atmosphere.  I think there is a difference
>>> in atmosphere when you have Andrew and Rich and Michał having a
>>> discussion, versus codebozo and leetcoder and trollmaster.  (Just
>>> making up random handles - no correspondence implied.)
>>>
>> What you describe as, in effect, a dehumamizing interface, others
>> perceive as a way to keep minimize their social exposure. Where you find
>> some ill-defined negative, others find a distinct positive. Is Gentoo
>> really in a position where it can turn away demonstrably skilled
>> contributors based solely on their wanting to minimize personal exposure?
>
> I think either decision will turn people away.
>
I realize that I am asking for hearsay here, but have you have anyone
tell you that allowing contributors to remain anonymous, at least to the
public at large, is an active turnoff to contributing to the project?

> You claim that we have an environment that people do not want to be
> personally exposed to.  I think it makes more sense to fix these
> issues than to cover them up by making it easier to avoid personal
> association with the distro.
>
No, my claim is that some people would prefer to avoid social exposure
in general, regardless of the environment; not that Gentoo has some
special toxicity to it. Furthermore, by even pseudonymously
contributing, they would be exposing themselves to the immediate
environment regardless, however by contributing pseudonymously they
could avoid secondary social effects. That and the recent purported
attempt to "fix" issues is more likely to turn people away than attract
them. Further, it is overtly silly to claim that something is being
"covered up" with regard to public interactions by not publishing the
particulars of all potential individuals engaged in those interactions,
after all, the interactions would be in public.

> Minimizing social exposure also means minimizing the personal
> consequences of your own actions.  I suspect that is likely to make
> the existing problems worse.
>
Again you make the argument that people need to be personally exposed to
"consequences" in order to be trustworthy while ignoring that existing
disciplinary mechanisms in Gentoo do not depend in any functional way on
PII, and that publishing PII purely on the basis of disciplinary
considerations could be quite reasonably considered to be an outrageous
overreach. There are reasons that "doxing" is generally considered to be
rather reprehensible.

> I think it is more important to make Gentoo a project that people are
> proud to be associated with.  This isn't just to avoid personal damage
> to reputation, but because it will actually make people want to
> participate.
>
If your contention, as you had previously strawmanned my contention to
be, is that people as a whole don't want to contribute to Gentoo now,
how do you explain the current pool of developers and other contributors
who are not listed in the rolls [devlist]? Are we all being coerced?

> If Gentoo turns into just another online forum where everybody trolls
> everybody else all the time and nobody bothers to do anything about
> it, then why would anybody but a troll want to participate?
>
Is your contention seriously that anyone who is not publicly know is a
troll and anyone who is publicly know is not? This seems distinctly
counter-evidentiary.

>> "Other people do it" is not exactly a great logical argument
>
> Sure, not on its own.  However, keep in mind that most of the stuff
> that people are complaining about with regard to GLEP 76 are standing
> policy in other well-funded and mainstream FOSS projects, like the
> Linux kernel.
>
> The fact that the Linux Foundation considers something a good idea
> doesn't automatically make it a good idea.  However, they do have all
> those pesky lawyers and all that which people seem to think we don't
> have enough of, and they also have a very positive reputation for the
> most part.  I don't see too many people who are ashamed to have their
> name in a signed-off-by header in the kernel.
>
The fact that the Linux Foundation considers something to be a good idea
for itself does not mean that even the Linux Foundation would consider
that same thing to be a good idea for everyone, or even anyone, else.
Having "all those pesky lawyers" working for you tends to imply that
they are, at least nominally, providing counsel apropos your specific
needs, or at least their conception thereof.

Also, why, exactly, do you think that if someone wishes to remain
anonymous, they would necessarily be "ashamed" of their work, or the
project they contributed to? Apropos Gentoo in specific, are you
deliberately implying that we regularly accept contributions which
should leave those providing them "ashamed" of themselves? If so,
perhaps that is something which should be fixed.

> It doesn't hurt to point out when a process resembles something that
> has been used elsewhere, so that others can look more closely and
> decide for themselves whether this has been a positive or negative
> thing.  MANY of Gentoo's policies are patterned after things other
> projects have done, since there is no point in re-inventing the wheel.
>
And, again, the circumstances of different projects are, somewhat
unsurprisingly, different. That project A does one thing and project B
does another does not make either necessarily right or wrong for project
C. Simply stating "they do it too" remains a weak argument for doing any
particular thing. For instance: Linux kernel uses GPL2 only (in that it
does not adopt the "or later" clause), that in itself is not a
particularly strong argument for another project to use GPL2 only, or
even GPL at all, if the project has different considerations in play.
Given that Gentoo is not the Linux Foundation, there are almost
certainly different considerations in play, and ignoring them on poorly
supported grounds is not productive.

[devlist] https://www.gentoo.org/inside-gentoo/developers/