Re: [gentoo-project] Summary of joint meeting between council and trustees

[Daniel Robbins]

Thanks very much for compiling this.

Yes, this email reply is somewhat chatty in nature, but I'm recovering from
the flu and need something to distract myself from my swollen tonsils at
1:48 AM in the morning, and I think it's worth saying (maybe that is the
antibiotics talking...)

The code of conduct enforcement, and the FreeBSD and Donnie videos. Getting
rid of assholes seems like a great idea. Strict enforcement of a code of
conduct seems like the right way to go. After all, if we don't, we might
get sued. And yet something about it rubs me the wrong way. I will share a
story -- I recently got pulled over by a cop for speeding in Santa Fe, NM,
on a rural road. The guy seemed to be a brand new cop (I confirmed this
after the fact by looking up his police academy graduating class online
after our encounter.) As he approached my window to ask for my license, he
just seemed a bit dead behind the eyes. His ultra-dispassionate posture
almost seemed strangely threatening, or alien. It made me wonder what he
was actually thinking -- like was he mentally reviewing the books of
statutes he had studied, trying to find some rule that would allow him to
shoot me dead on the spot? Eek. He ended up writing me *two* tickets --
including a mandatory court appearance in front of a judge -- for things
that more seasoned police officers would have simply given me a friendly
warning about and decided not to pursue. He seemed excited when I couldn't
find a current proof of registration lost in my glove box or forgotten at
home. More opportunities to dispense justice! And no, I was not doing
anything except going a bit fast on a lightly-traveled rural country road.

I share this story to point out a paradox. In theory, this police officer's
job in enforcing the laws of the land is to bring some civility and mutual
respect to our streets and communities. And yet, they are also in a
position of power and can be threatening, overbearing, and overly punitive,
putting everyone 'on guard.' Can we make a society more civil by flooding
it with legions of brand new police officers? And what makes a good police
officer? In my opinion, a good police officer can relate to someone else as
a fellow human being, and have the ability to not use this power
punitively, having some amount of respect for the power that they wield on
behalf of their community

Similarly to this example, for Gentoo, I'd also like to suggest that
application of rules cannot be a solution in itself. We need to have a
program to actually recognize and model GOOD behavior, and get that to be
an intrinsic part of the culture, something that is a living part of the
project. Like, "how many other people did you help out today?" "When was
the last time you offered words of encouragement to someone else?" It may
sound kind of lame, but when you realize how important it is to have a
positive culture, it makes it worth doing and talking about. It's about
recognizing what we DON'T want to be, so we're willing to sound a bit like
Mr. Rogers or Bob Ross from The Joy of Painting -- because the alternative
was much worse (Side-note: Bob Ross was in the military. A quote: "I was
the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your
bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work. The job requires
you to be a mean, tough person. And I was fed up with it. I promised myself
that if I ever got away from it, it wasn't going to be that way anymore.")
We all need to make such promises to ourselves. And if a code of conduct is
framed in this way, as a promise made to oneself to continually improve
ones conduct towards others, then it's something I support.

But I'm afraid of the dark side -- that the reflexive enforcement of
so-called 'codes of conduct' can itself be quite threatening, overbearing
and punitive, and suck life out of a project. Like my encounter with a
brand-new cop, it can also attract people who like to wield power for the
wrong reasons, and cause things to spin MORE out of control rather than
improve.Then in our lack of wisdom, we decide to flood the project with
brand new police officers who have a lack of restraint, wisdom and
compassion, as if that will make anything better. That's why I think it's
so important to NOT to focus on the bad behavior exclusively -- but make
sure that there is a process to reward the GOOD -- incorporate this into
Gentoo culture. Focus on the solution first, and by doing so, attack the
problem by removing its foundation.


On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 6:10 PM, Matthew Thode <prometheanfire@g.o>
wrote:

> Here's the summary of our meeting, I'm going to use our agenda to help
> organize it.
>
> Agenda:
>   Council:
>     - Copyright Policy
>       - https://bugs.gentoo.org/642072
>       - https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Aliceinwire/CopyrightPolicy
>       - *result* ulm and alicef will work on this with the goal of at
>         least enumerating what our current status is by next meeting
>     - Financial status of the foundation
>       - irs status
>       - *result* Foundation is working on finalizing our records for our
>         taxes with the goal that we will have this issue more or less
>         solved by the end of the tax year (July).
>     - Purpose of the Foundation Council split
>       - Why we're preventing each from serving on in the other
>       - *result* both to prevent conflicts of intrest (council requests
>         funding and then as trustees would self approve) and to prevent
>         overwork
>     - Legal protection for the foundation
>       - D&O quote
>       - *result* the cost was too high (1-2k per month)
>     - Criteria for accepting members to the foundation
>       - *result* Foundation was willing to tighten this, something like
>         the staffer quiz to be given to non-devs (and judged by the
>         trustees and/or officers), it'd take a bylaw change and someone
>         to 'champion' it.
>     - Funding for travel and meetups
>       - *result* waiting on the IRS, once that's complete we will be in
>         a more flexible place.
>
> Foundation:
>   - CoC enforcement
>     - Current enforcement (or lack thereof) exposes us to possible
> harassment
>       claims.
>       - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib7tFvw34DM (about 20 minutes in)
>       - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZSli7QW4rg
>   - Comrel
>     - Same issues as with CoC enforcement, lack of enforcement exposes
>       us to possible harassment claims.
>     - Who oversees it and how often are reviews of comrel decisions done?
>     - Appointment only from within comrel to comrel member has self
>       reenforcement attributes that could be counterproductive.
>   - *result*  The above two were combined as they are related
>     - Proctors are being worked on (dilfridge and prometheanfire to
>       work on it)
>       - It was not clear if they should be a sub-project of comrel or
>         not.
>       - This would help solve CoC enforcement
>     - reporting actions taken (or not) on bugs to the trustees so they
>       are aware of possible problems (mainly legal) before they hit us.
>       - I think this was well taken, but no hard decision on this was
>         finalized.
>
>
>
> --
> Matthew Thode (prometheanfire)
>