Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Council 2014 / 2015 election

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2014, Rich Freeman wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 6:34 AM, Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o> wrote:
>> On 07/04/14 08:59, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
>>>
>>> The potential for "conflict of interests" is the reason any candidate
>>> that is a member of ComRel (in the past devrel) gets flagged, so that
>>> voters are aware of that. That is the same reason Trustees are flagged.
>>> This fear of a ComRel "cabal" in my view seems to have been born of a
>>> fear or distrust of some developers, mostly more recent developers, that
>>> either don't know or don't understand ComRel and tend to see if as a
>>> "old men club" that is "closed" to them. I think it's a pity such a
>>> sentiment was born and has grown.
>>
>> Blame your predecessors who followed a scorched earth policy - it'll
>> take lots of time to gain trust
>>
>
> Honestly, I'd be a proponent of making ComRel more transparent in
> terms of its constitution.  It deals with sensitive issues and I don't
> have a problem with the details of what they do being held in
> confidence unless the parties involved want them to be public.
> However, there is no need for the actual organization of the team to
> be non-open.
>
> I'll just toss out some ideas and maybe some will be helpful.  Please
> note that I'm not suggesting that anybody is really trying to keep
> secrets here - it is just easier to have a discussion and not write up
> minutes than it is to announce things on lists, and so things probably
> happen that way.
>
> 1.  Announced elections, membership changes, etc.  When these things
> happen, publish it on -project, or at least on the team page.  Make it
> easy for everybody to see what is going on with the
> membership/leadership of ComRel.  There is no need for the annual lead
> election to be secret.

If you mean the ballots should be public, I disagree. Even though we've 
been voting through email for the past years, I don't think everyone 
outside of ComRel needs to be aware of the voting done by each ComRel 
member.
If you mean that the result of an election should be public, I agree. 
That's what we've been doing for a few years. I don't recall if this 
year's election of Alec (antarus) was published or not - it happened in 
the middle of a very intense period (for me).
About new membership, Markos did send emails to the mls asking for new 
members and did announce who joined the team. The membership list is also 
part of the project page.

> 2.  Announced and open regular meetings.  Meetings could have an open
> and a closed component if actual cases are to be discussed.  Things
> like policy can be discussed in the open.  I don't know how meetings
> are held now, but the closed part can happen wherever things happen
> today, and the open part could be in #gentoo-meetings or such with
> published logs.  Maybe you meet for 30 minutes in the open and then 30
> minutes closed.  Or maybe every other meeting is open.  Figure out
> what works for the team, but with the goal of giving the community
> more insight and influence over anything which isn't personal.   The
> Trustees routinely deal with closed bugs that contain personal or
> financial details we don't want on the Internet, but any actual
> decisions are in the open.  So, everybody can see that we're spending
> $500 on some server, without seeing scans of checks and credit card
> numbers.

ComRel is composed of several teams that don't have exactly a regular 
"schedule". You can only recruit if there's someone to recruit and if 
there is, when you and the recruit have time for it. We don't meet every 
Tuesday to go over logs from IRC or mls and see if anyone needs to be 
"pusnished". One of the few teams that has a somewhat regular activity is
Undertakers as they get emails every 15 days with a summary of developers 
activity.
In any case, I believe you're talking about "Conflict Resolution". That 
work is done on a "need to" basis. While following activity in the 
community we may decide to act (publicly or privately) if we find someone 
is going "off-stray" or getting into trouble. However, most of the public 
work is done when the community complaints about certain actions / 
behaviour by individual members.
This work is usually started by a single member of ComRel that will 
privately contact the other members letting them know he's working on that 
case or by a group of members meeting online and deciding who will deal 
with the case. If things escalate, more members may get involved and if 
there's a need, we get a voting by the team about possible sanctions.
None of the above has a regular schedule that could be done on scheduled 
meetings and I believe most of it is not appropriate for public view. The 
team itself has frequent "improptu" meetings in which members gather and 
we may talk about specific on-going cases or about "alarming signs".
I agree with you that changes to policies should be discussed in the mls. 
We did that a few years ago. We definitely need to publish the resulting 
policy so everyone is aware of it.

> 3.  This is a bigger change, but I'd advocate doing with ComRel what
> was done last year with QA.  Have the team self-governing for the most
> part, but with the Council having to confirm the lead and basically
> having the effective ability to take over if necessary.  I'd highly
> discourage the Council ever doing that, but I'd look at it a bit like
> being able to Impeach or Recall an elected official - just a way to
> have accountability and the mandate that goes along with that.

I strongly object to this idea, just like I did with QA.
The goal / purpose of ComRel is not to be "cozy" team that everyone feels 
great with. To have an effective ComRel team, it needs to be made of 
people with certain traits (level headed, fair, independent, trustworthy) 
that do their work with the best interest of Gentoo "at heart". That's why 
it can't be a "open to everyone" team.
Besides, the council can always revert ComRel decisions and it always had 
the power to deal with a "rotten" ComRel or ComRel lead.

> All of that goes far beyond whether there is overlap in Council/team membership.
>
> QA has basically been doing all three of these and I think it has been
> a good change.  Sure, not everybody agrees with everything the new
> team has been doing, but the fact is that at least everybody knows
> what is going on, who is in charge, and how they got to be in charge.
> I think those are steps in the right direction.

Even though I agree that there's a more visible QA team now, I don't 
necessarily agree that we're better now. I hope and expect the new team 
will get better with time, but they've been dragged into many and noisy 
conflicts, which have even lead to complaints to ComRel.
Your setting of a precedent also worries me as a way for any particular 
new council to decide it's time to replace QA, just because the 2013/2014 
council did it.

> Rich

Jorge