Re: [gentoo-project] Why should you *not* vote on existing Council members

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Fri, 14 Jun 2019, Michał Górny wrote:

> Meeting time changes without announcement
> =========================================
> This year we had a pretty unique situation.  Possibly for the first time
> in history of Gentoo, a Council member who couldn't attend the meeting
> requested changing meeting time rather than appointing a proxy.

Time of meetings was changed more than once in the past, for various
reasons.

"The time and date of each meeting is decided by the active Council
and is announced at least two weeks earlier through email to the
gentoo-project and gentoo-dev-announce mailing lists."
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council

> What I perceive to be a problem is that Council unilaterally changed
> the meeting time without being concerned about other attendees.  They
> not only failed to ask people submitting the items but also failed to
> inform them properly.

> The only way to know about the changed time was to notice it on the
> agenda [7].

So it *was* announced, in the very meeting's agenda sent to
gentoo-project and gentoo-dev-announce. (In addition, date and time were
present in the topic of #gentoo-council.) Sorry if you have missed it.

> There wasn't even a single 'please note that the meeting will be held
> 2 hours later than usual'.

Indeed, that could have been more prominent. Note that normally we try
to emphasise such changes (just picking two examples, there are more):
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/49e642140724ad0d22847e4e6798cc84
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/message/6b32250b8bf53cd3016331aebd75c956

> Secret meetings, secret decisions
> =================================
> This year's Council has been engaged in accepting secret agenda item
> concerning commit access of a pseudonymous dev, holding secret meetings,
> over it and making secret decisions that were never announced.
> At the same time, they managed to blame Undertakers for not knowing
> about any of that.

> To cite a Bugzilla comment on the topic:

> | You are aware that we have a special situation here? Most of
> | the inactivity period falls between the acceptance of GLEP 76
> | (in September/October 2018) and the Council sorting out a way for him
> | how to proceed (in April 2019).  [...]  [11]

This has been taken out of context, with the rest of the comment (about
not blaming Undertakers) being omitted:

| I don't see any accusation there. It is a motion drafted during the
| meeting, so please give us some leeway if it isn't the most beautiful
| wording in the world. 

> Are you aware of those April 2019 proceedings?  Because there's no trace
> of any decision in meeting logs.

Of course there cannot be a public log of a private meeting where
personal matters of a dev are discussed. And how do you know if any
votes were taken during that meeting? Maybe there weren't?

What do you suggest? Should the Council refuse any requests of a
developer to discuss personal issues?

> Summary
> =======
> It is my vision for the Council to represent community, and work with
> community to make a better Gentoo.  However, I feel like the current
> Council is more focused on treasuring their own superiority and power.

Hear, hear!

> To reiterate two of my major points:

> 1. Council members don't really have time to be on the Council, yet they
> continue running for the next term.

> 2. Council members like to make important decisions within one or two
> hours of Council meeting privately, and frequently don't value wider
> feedback beforehand.

These are generalisations which aren't admissible.

Ulrich

> [7] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/f13a423c093fef063d3d738154faa99c
> [11] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=np-hardass#c33