| 1 |
On 2019-07-04 04:14, Robin H. Johnson wrote: |
| 2 |
> I realize that there is only a short period left in the election, but |
| 3 |
> I've been busy with IRL issues, and mgorny's trustee manifesto [1] ascribed |
| 4 |
> something to the Council members that concerned me; there's one |
| 5 |
> additional good question for the Council that I'll close with. |
| 6 |
> |
| 7 |
> 1. Points 1a&1c of mgorny's manifesto imply that the council can |
| 8 |
> unilaterally prevent support of any given package in Gentoo, and |
| 9 |
> basically remove the package from the distribution. |
| 10 |
> |
| 11 |
> This is despite any developers that may wish to support the package. |
| 12 |
> |
| 13 |
> What's your opinion of the council using this offensively against |
| 14 |
> packages? As a hypothetical, say systemd-ng comes about, with an even |
| 15 |
> worse opinionated choices than those presently in systemd. Should the |
| 16 |
> council be able to force support for openrc & systemd stop? |
| 17 |
|
| 18 |
My understanding of the council is, that the council itself is 'passive' |
| 19 |
and isn't responsible for developing/pushing new visions/ideas just |
| 20 |
because it is the council. That means that the council, representing the |
| 21 |
community, will *only* vote on behalf of the community on motions the |
| 22 |
community brought up. Of course because any council member is also part |
| 23 |
of the community, council members can start a motion like any other |
| 24 |
community member. But it will happen without any council hat and |
| 25 |
everything must follow the same rules/process (mailing lists...). |
| 26 |
|
| 27 |
Regarding the specific example: |
| 28 |
At the moment, and I don't see this changing, any developer is free to |
| 29 |
do whatever they want to do in Gentoo as long as they don't break things |
| 30 |
and follow Gentoo rules. So if there will be a new init system and |
| 31 |
someone wants to support that, he/she is free to do that (as long as |
| 32 |
he/she is able to do that across whole repository without violating |
| 33 |
Gentoo rules (like QA...). tl;dr "As long as maintainer isn't doing |
| 34 |
something crazy"). |
| 35 |
|
| 36 |
Only if someone else within community will create a motion that the |
| 37 |
proposition should be stopped for $reasons this will become topic for |
| 38 |
council. And after following the process, council member will finally |
| 39 |
have decide on that motion. |
| 40 |
|
| 41 |
Regarding 1c: It's the money of the foundation. At the moment, council |
| 42 |
has no rights to tell foundation how they have to spend the money. As |
| 43 |
long as foundation won't change that (for example they could at least |
| 44 |
give council one vote for funding requests), we don't really need to |
| 45 |
talk about this. |
| 46 |
|
| 47 |
|
| 48 |
For the records: When I read mgorny's statement I got a different |
| 49 |
message in first place. Do you remind the sys-firmware/intel-microcode |
| 50 |
license hick hack around ~2018-08-23? As maintainer and as a person with |
| 51 |
some insights I *knew* that Intel was going to revert that license |
| 52 |
change. Therefore I didn't want to rev bump package for just a few hours |
| 53 |
or days to avoid causing unnecessary work for all of us, including |
| 54 |
Gentoo users. What happened? A trustee went forward and did that change |
| 55 |
on behalf of trustees ("copyright is trustee territory") against my will |
| 56 |
[1]. A few hours later, as I had 'predicted', Intel finally publicly |
| 57 |
announced that the license change will be reverted and I was able to |
| 58 |
revert that commit [2]. The message I got from reading mgorny's |
| 59 |
*Trustee* manifesto is, that he doesn't like such an interference (which |
| 60 |
will bring us to your second question). |
| 61 |
|
| 62 |
|
| 63 |
> 2. As an additional point, can you try to give your version of a simple |
| 64 |
> statement on the legal liabilities that the Council as a whole, and |
| 65 |
> the Council members as individuals, have for their actions? |
| 66 |
|
| 67 |
At the moment, council has zero legal liabilities. That's because |
| 68 |
council has no legal body. In Gentoo, only the Gentoo foundation has a |
| 69 |
legal body. But to my knowledge, foundation doesn't even mention council |
| 70 |
in any legal document, i.e. council doesn't exist from foundation's POV |
| 71 |
(council is only tolerated) so council currently doesn't have any |
| 72 |
official position with legal liabilities. |
| 73 |
|
| 74 |
With this in mind, sure, as trustee with legal obligations for the |
| 75 |
foundation no one else has, I understand that you sometimes believe you |
| 76 |
must cover your 'ass' because foundation will hold you responsible for |
| 77 |
any damage you may cause (this will include damages you don't cause in |
| 78 |
first place but could have prevented). |
| 79 |
Regarding my example with intel-microcode package: If you as trustee |
| 80 |
really believe that Gentoo foundation could be in *real trouble* due to |
| 81 |
that license violation... you have to do your thing because if you are |
| 82 |
right and didn't do your job, you can be sure that foundation will try |
| 83 |
to get their money back from you... assuming board won't get approval of |
| 84 |
the actions). |
| 85 |
|
| 86 |
|
| 87 |
See also: |
| 88 |
========= |
| 89 |
[1] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=933df6 |
| 90 |
|
| 91 |
[2] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=db0abe |
| 92 |
|
| 93 |
|
| 94 |
-- |
| 95 |
Regards, |
| 96 |
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer |
| 97 |
C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5 |
Archives