Re: [gentoo-project] Questions to nominees

[Georgy Yakovlev]

On Sunday, June 20, 2021 2:40:36 PM PDT David Seifert wrote:
> Nominees,
> congratulations on your nominations! As part of this year's elections,
> I'd like to pose five questions to the nominees, that I believe are
> important factors in considering someone a good candidate for the
> council:
>
> 1. Do you feel you have enough time to commit to serving as a Gentoo
> council member in the 2021/2022 term? Does your commit activity support
> this? If you served in 2020/2021, have you prepared for council meetings
> and finished all unfinished business for which you were responsible (as
> a council member)?
>
Yes/Yes/Yes
Nothing really to add here, some details covered in following answers.

> 2. Project X and Project Y have irreconcilable differences, but you
> aren't involved with any of the projects. A crucial technical decision
> needs to be made. How will you react? Will you defer? Do you consider
> abstaining a viable option for the group of people making decisions as a
> last resort?
>
I will do research and try to understand both positions,
talk with peers outside council meeting time, gather opinions.
Deferring if possible if I strongly feel that wrong decision is being made.
Abstaining is almost never an option for me.

> 3. Given your typical area of responsibility, how have you performed?
>
I was affected severely by burnout, isolation and health
problems last year, but I think I did just fine and kept doing gentoo work
and maintained friendly attitude regardless of personal problems.

> 4. What positive change/idea/plan do you have for Gentoo that you would
> try to further (not necessarily as a council member)? By positive change
> I mean actually changing something concrete, not some diffuse notion of
> "improving how the council acts" or non-tangible deliverable.
>
Many. Not everything is deliverable and no time for all of it. 
I'll list just things I'm confident in:
* I have plans to add module signing support to our kernels and
 eclasses. I made an attempt 2 years ago, but it really required EAPI=7
 for selective strip support.
* eselect-rust rewrite is pending and the way rust is installed will change
 in the future.
* A lot of ppc64 work is in progress and I will continue
 improving ppc64 experience on gentoo.

> 5. Do you think the council should be more agile - i.e. take decisions
> for the purpose of propelling Gentoo forward, rather than waiting for
> the decision to be made for it? Would you consider a small number of
> departing views on the mailing list or IRC to be enough to derail a
> proposal? When do you consider a controversial issue to have been
> discussed enough?
>
Yes, council feels sluggish and it needs to be proactive as well.

As for departing views, it really depends.
There are people who always disagree just for sake of it,
or people who always disagree on certain topic,
or people who have to have unnecessary opinion on everything.
While I try to keep all factors considered, getting blocked by vocal minority
or known offenders/trolls is not productive.
But valid and constructive criticism is always considered.

Controversial decisions  may need more input from developer or user community.
I can't really define exact "enough" condition.
I guess, when all the information is provided but only trolls remain active.

> Regards
> David