Re: [gentoo-project] Representation of Gentoo on third-party platforms

[Daniel Campbell]

(Warning: wall of text)

On 11/07/2016 04:20 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 2:43 AM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:
>>
>> Gentoo is ultimately better off if it takes its stance of
>> non-involvement more seriously and butts out of any disputes until
>> they affect Gentoo itself, i.e. commit wars, spam or harassment in
>> IRC/forums, etc.
>
> As far as I can tell that is basically the status quo.  About the only
> times I've seen Comrel doing anything is when it involves fairly
> serious issues that fall into the sorts of categories you describe
> here.
>
> Sure, the folks involved might go telling everybody they know that
> they're being persecuted for whatever.  Since Gentoo does not disclose
> why people are asked to leave, there is really nothing to contradict
> their side of the story.  That is frustrating, but I don't think we
> really have any reasonable alternatives.

A group whose sole purpose is to mediate disputes and makes the business
of others its business is, to me, the exact opposite of staying out of
disputes and letting adults be adults.

>> Why is comrel necessary? Do we not have policy documents outlining the
>> consequences of violating the CoC?
>
> This is like saying why do we need a kernel project when we have
> documents explaining how the kernel gets maintained.
>
> Comrel is the body that actually administers enforcement of the CoC.

And how do they enforce that? Somebody has to have access to infra,
forums, mailing lists, etc. Does comrel have its hands in that many
cookie jars? If so, something is very wrong with that picture. The most
powerful groups in Gentoo are given their power on the condition that they
meet re-election and are accountable to what amounts to constituents
(devs and/or foundation members). Trustees are voted on, Council is
voted on. Ignoring the metastructure revisiting that we've seen in other
threads, frankly comrel doesn't deserve that much power when there is
already staff who can (and already does) do comrel's job. They interact
directly with problem users/devs and "hold'er steady". Their job is
mostly transparent and thankless, but they already handle it.

Having people wearing both hats is also dangerous, as it creates a
chilling effect on anyone on the business end of comrel. If 2 or 3
members of Comrel are also Councilors, one of two things happens: those
people sit out of appeals (making the remaining council votes more
powerful than usual) or they double down on their decision and create a
stacked deck. Neither outcome is ideal or impartial. If you or someone
else were on the business end of such decisions, would you take an
honest shot at an appeal, knowing that a few of the same people who made
the initial decision were overseeing its appeal? To me, that's a red
flag for corruption, and some may consider that grounds to petition the
Foundation for a recall. In my searching, I didn't see a time where that
happened. I hope nothing comes to a head like that.

>> Removing comrel can reduce legal liability in that there _is_ no
>> investigative team involved, no slander or libel to worry about.
>
> When somebody goes doing "commit wars, spam or harassment in
> IRC/forums, etc" how would you propose dealing with those problems
> without having some sort of investigative team?

That honestly depends on the incident. Disrupting discussion or support
in an official Gentoo channel on IRC is often handled by ops with
warnings, kicks, and if it's bad enough, temporary bans. Comrel's not
even involved with that unless it chooses to be.

Commit wars are trivial to mediate, and git does a great job of
creating a "paper trail". We have policies to point to. We can enact
similar consequences, or require peer review for X amount of time. No
investigation is needed because it's public.

The forums are basically identical to IRC; someone screws up, the
software has means to deal with things, and admins have access to PMs,
logs, etc without any need to formally investigate and make a scene.

>> Then
>> there's the added bonus of those devs gaining free time to do things
>> that they enjoy rather than listen to greivances and being expected to
>> please two or more parties.
>
> They're volunteers.  They're not forced to do anything.  Volunteer
> resources generally aren't fungible.  If the Council said that MIPS is
> a waste of time and the MIPS team is disbanded it isn't like they'd
> just start spending the time they spend on MIPS on other Gentoo
> projects.  They might leave Gentoo entirely, or work on something
> completely different.  If having a MIPS team were actively harmful to
> Gentoo it might still be the right call, but that is of course not the
> case.

Are you saying there are people within Gentoo that volunteer to get in
other peoples' business and might leave Gentoo if they were removed from
that role? Do we really want a culture of nosiness? You're right in that
we're all volunteers, but perhaps we should stop for a moment and
consider whether we *want* that sort of volunteer. We're strapped for
manpower, sure, but not for that sort of thing. We need package
maintainers, arch testers, recruiters, and mentors; not overseers.

>> Large problems can be pushed to the
>> council, as they are already elected officials who are expected to make
>> impactful decisions on Gentoo.
>
> The way it works is that large problems get pushed to Comrel, and if
> the people involved are dissatisfied with the results they can appeal
> to Council.
>
> I don't have a problem with Council handling Comrel the way it handles
> QA.  I don't think it will improve things if the Council takes over
> the role of Comrel entirely.  The Council is a governance body for
> just about everything in the distro, it isn't staffed to run
> everything directly.  If you let the Council delegate, then fine, but
> now we basically are back to Comrel.
>
> And in the end any really big decision that Comrel makes ultimately
> makes its way through the Council if the person impacted thinks that
> they're likely to disagree with Comrel.

As I mentioned a few quotes up, the system does not work as intended if
there is co-membership between Council and Comrel, because it blurs the
lines between the two. If one group is beholden to the other, and there
are people who wear both hats, then clearly more influence lies with
those individuals than either of the groups separately. It may not be
outright corruption on paper, but the fact that it allows it to begin
with is what I'd consider a bug or loophole. We generally patch that
sort of stuff out.

>> If an issue is not big or impactful
>> enough to bring to the council, then the parties involved need to
>> solve their conflict in other, hopefully more constructive ways.
>
> That is already what they're supposed to do before bringing it to
> Comrel.  From the few appeals I've seen that usually does tend to
> happen to some degree, but if you're the victim of harassment and
> somebody doesn't stop when politely asked to stop, then I don't think
> we can expect much to come out of that.

A fair point. Sometimes people just don't get along. Those are the edge
cases where someone is actually being a social threat to Gentoo. To
bring up my upstream metaphor again, we should tweak that only to the
extent that it protects Gentoo. Of the incidents that Comrel has become
involved in, how many were actually warranted? Has that information
even been shared with you? Those are rhetorical questions, as I know
policy dictates (at this time, anyway) it's kept quiet. I'd wager the
involvement has been more than what should have been, and the
organizational failure to audit that is telling.

>> Third
>> party platforms already have their own guidelines, so if someone is
>> dissatisfied with Gentoo's action (or inaction), they can go to the
>> platform moderators and we (Gentoo) don't need to be involved.
>
> And what if the platform moderator doesn't do anything, and somebody
> is the victim of harassment on a medium that bears our name and logo?
> What happens when people start branding Gentoo with the sorts of bad
> behavior that is occurring on that third party site?

That's not the Council's concern. Things having to do with trademarks
are meant to be handled by the Trustees. The platform is notified with
the trademark notice, and they have the choice to act on it or face
legal action. Most platforms won't give it a second thought and will
have the logo removed without hesitation. "Gentoo" is a species of
animal and has uses in other industries, so the removal of the logo is
likely enough to remove legal liability. I'm not a lawyer, but it holds
up to logic imo.

> And if you continue to do nothing, then good luck ever stopping
> anybody who sets up an "Official Gentoo Website" or whatever with our
> logo on it, because they'll just point to the various other third
> party sites where we fail to take action, and a court can decide that
> we've failed to protect our trademark and the Gentoo name is worthless
> legally.  Then somebody gets upset and sues the Trustees for failure
> to carry out their fiduciary duties and spoliation of assets.

Right. But again, the council doesn't handle that sort of stuff. As
a councilor, you're obviously free to alert the trustees (like the
rest of us), but ultimately a councilor worries about mostly technical
or organizational things. I'm aware I suggested the Council handle
social disputes, but when it reaches the point of the Council, there
should be evidence of harm against Gentoo; so clear that it doesn't need
investigation. Without that sort of undeniable evidence, no group in
Gentoo has business doling out punishments or bans.

>>
>> tldr: we should treat social disputes the same way we treat upstream
>> software: modify it only when Gentoo functionality depends on it.
>>
>
> Well sure, and that is why people get to appeal to the Council.  I
> can't think of any Council members who have been supportive of
> significant Comrel actions when somebody hasn't done something
> seriously wrong.  Now, I can't say who that sort of action has been
> taken against, or what they've actually done seriously wrong, and I
> get that this is going to make people suspicious.  I just can't think
> of a way to do that without creating liability both for Gentoo and
> myself.
>
> There has been talk of reviving the Proctors to deal with more minor
> stuff, basically empowering forum mods, IRC ops, and so on.
>
IRC ops and forum members should be part of Staff, if they aren't
already. Again, we do not need a group of people whose sole purpose
is to get into peoples' business. As developers, we're all partly
responsible for Gentoo and are expected to act in its interests where
relevant. If a dispute is not negatively affecting Gentoo, why do we
need to get involved?

-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
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