Re: [gentoo-project] Social Contract clean-up

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 2:48 AM, Paweł Hajdan, Jr.
<phajdan.jr@g.o> wrote:
>
> Here's one theory: with Council's limited powers and a lot of day-to-day
> development not being directly affected by it, the support might not be
> enthusiastic, just sticking to people known not to cause trouble.
>

++

I hate to bring this up here, but this sounds a lot like the Old
Testament.  When things got rough the Israelites wanted to go back to
Egypt.  Then they wanted a king to lead them into prosperity (a simple
solution to real problems they were facing).

Everybody would love to have Elon Musk running Gentoo.  Or at least,
the vision they personally have of Elon Musk.  People look at SpaceX
and think that is where they'd want to work...at least until they see
the statistics that the average employee only sticks around for 1.5
years.

The thing is that we already have a system where anybody can propose
any radical change they want.  The only thing they lack is the ability
to force this change on everybody else.

Without this ability I'll concede that a lot of great ideas probably
don't get introduced, and perhaps many great leaders may look for
other flocks to lead.  I know I've seen frustrations expressed on the
lists and elsewhere about how it takes too long to get things done
around here.

If we created a position for benevolent dictator would we find an Elon
Musk applying to fill it?  Would we want this?  Would people stay?

I don't pretend to know the answer better than anybody else.  It is a
tempting idea, but then again there is probably a reason that we're
"sticking to people known not to cause trouble."  We can probably all
think of somebody we'd love to see in charge of Gentoo, with all the
barriers removed to them making Gentoo a great place.  Then we can
probably also all think of somebody who would be an absolute nightmare
if given the same power.  Heck, we can probably also think of
individuals who could be both in a single package.

The question is whether we want to roll the dice.  When you put a
committee in charge reversion to the mean is the norm.  When you put
one person in charge you get that opportunity to roll a natural 20, or
1.

To tie this to my other email, I'll say one other thing about rolling
dice:  Who do you see buying the most lottery tickets in the real
world?  Those would be the people who have the least stake in the
current state.  Gentoo does have some real problems, and if it costs
you nothing, there can be a real temptation to roll those dice.  After
all, there are plenty of other distros out there if it doesn't turn
out well...

-- 
Rich