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>>>>> On Wed, 27 Jun 2018, Michał Górny wrote: |
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> Three more questions from me: |
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> 1. Do you believe that Council members should respect the requests |
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> of the developer community even if they disagree with them? |
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> Or should Council members decide based on their own judgment of |
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> arguments presented? |
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> Example: there's a heated debate, and the majority of respondents |
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> request that X is implemented. However, after reading all the |
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> arguments you don't think that X is a good idea but you haven't |
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> managed to convince others. Would you vote for X (as your |
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> electorate demands) or against it (as you believe is better for |
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> the distro)? |
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Things are usually not as clear cut as in your constructed example. |
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If there is consensus in a discussion (which doesn't exclude that |
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there could be single dissenting voices) then generally the council |
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should go with that. However, if there's consensus then normally |
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there's no reason for the council to get involved. |
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OTOH, if there is disagreement then the council may be asked to |
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resolve the issue. That's the reason why the council exists in the |
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first place, namely to have a procedure for deciding global issues, |
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without the need to have an all-devs vote for everything. |
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In short, I would not vote against developer consensus, but in case of |
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an unresolved controversy my vote would be based on my judgement what |
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will be best for the distro. |
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> 2. Do you believe that the Council should proactively research the |
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> state of affairs and make decisions whenever they believe the |
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> direction of the distribution needs to be adjusted? Or should it |
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> be passive and avoid involvement unless developers explicitly |
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> request Council's intervention? |
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How would you even measure "proactivity", and how would you |
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distinguish between "the Council" and its members acting as |
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individuals? If I look at the number of agenda items for the past |
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term (excluding unfinished business and open bugs), then about 75% of |
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the items were submitted by council members, 20% by other developers, |
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and 5% by users. Then again, are council members simply submitting so |
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much because they at the same time are very active devs, or in their |
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capacity as council members? |
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> 3. Do you believe the developer community should hold the power |
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> to veto or dissolve the Council at any point? Provided there's |
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> a global developer vote agreeing on that. |
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Presumably, I would not oppose a voting system similar to Debian's |
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"general resolution" (as suggested in [1]), if it has reasonably high |
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thresholds (because dissolving the Council every other month won't |
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help us either). |
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OTOH, I am a friend of the KISS principle [2], and we should be very |
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careful not to unnecessarily complicate our processes by adding too |
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many layers. |
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Ulrich |
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[1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20180408-summary.txt |
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[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle |
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