Re: [gentoo-project] Social Contract clean-up

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 7:49 PM, Daniel Robbins <drobbins@××××××.org> wrote:
>
> I do have a serious problem with the Council as it is manifesting itself
> today as well as its insular nature.

How is the Council any more insular than the Trustees?  They have
almost identical constituencies.

> It is pretty clear to many that the Council has some serious problems and is only nominally supported by developers.

Most of the Council has been re-elected numerous times, usually with
twice as many candidates as posts up for election.  If developers
didn't care for them they wouldn't keep voting for them.

Sure, there are both developers and non-developers who disagree and
they repeatedly post on the lists.  In part they post on the lists
because the candidates they prefer lose in the elections.  For many
who support the Council there is little point to argue on the lists,
because things are going the way they want already.

> However, they will be held accountable to the same
> behavioral standards that they establish project-wide by the trustees.

And then who will hold the trustees accountable?  If annual elections
of the Council are apparently not enough accountability, how are
bi-annual elections of the Trustees any better?

> 2) Encourage Gentoo users to become members of the Foundation through
> outreach and other initiatives.

IMO this is a mistake, because there is no proof of stake.  If
somebody actually does have a significant stake and is willing to
accept the responsibilities then they should be made a developer
anyway.

I'm not aware of any organization that just lets random interested
parties without any stake hold voting rights over their affairs.

Voting is easy.  Dealing with the consequences of those votes often is
not easy.  It is best that voting be limited to those who understand
the burden of the policies being proposed, and who have already
demonstrated a willingness to shoulder them.

Otherwise it just becomes too easy for a majority to vote for stuff
that becomes somebody else's problem to deliver, and to basically hold
the project hostage.  Right now the Council mainly acts to eliminate
roadblocks so that devs can work on the things that interest them,
because they appreciate that you can't force devs to work on the
features somebody else wants.  A bunch of voters without this
perspective could end up saying "you're not allowed to work on this,
because you still haven't delivered what we told you to deliver last
month."

Letting anybody and everybody tell your project what it should do
sounds democratic, but I don't really see what the incentive is for
everybody doing the work when they end up having to bend over
backwards to please people who aren't doing work.

> The Foundation currently has funds to pay User Representatives a modest salary or consulting fee.

You're actually proposing that the only paid position in Gentoo be one
that orders all the unpaid volunteers around, wearing the mantle of
"the users" with no accountability to the voluteers they're issuing
orders to because the intent is to dilute their votes for the board
using a larger number of non-volunteers?

Again, if somebody IS a volunteer but isn't a developer, then I'm all
for giving them developer status as long as they follow the code of
conduct and generally get along.  Gentoo developers are not limited to
ebuild maintainers.  We already allow forum moderators and
documentation maintainers and other roles to vote for Council and to
become Foundation members.  This isn't about whether people can
program or not, so hopefully the term "developer" isn't confusing.

If somebody isn't an active contributor, then why let them vote?

-- 
Rich