Re: [gentoo-project] Evidence of idella4's damage to Gentoo, please

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 4:47 PM, Gregory Woodbury <redwolfe@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> So, as far as Gentoo: I think the distro has become a bit too bureaucratic
> and
> has lost some of the will to get things done. To salvage the project, it
> will need
> to open up and focus on getting things done rather than to focus on being a
> community that doesn't want to offend anybody.

So, while I agree with the majority of your post in general, I don't
see how it really fits Gentoo.  Most of those in leadership have been
fairly up-front that they're much more concerned about pragmatism than
rules.  There are certainly reasons to have
rules/guidelines/documentation/etc, but we'll never have a perfect set
of rules and we don't let written rules stand in the way of doing the
right thing.

When somebody messes up, comrel deals with it.  If they have a problem
with comrel the council deals with it.  If the community has a problem
with the council they can vote for a different council.  I don't
really see a lot of bureaucracy here.

In fact, I think this is one of the largest misconceptions I see in
debates on this general topic.  People seem to think that if they
could just see all the data they could point out where some reasoning
was wrong and change the Council's minds, as if there is some kind of
logical argument at stake which must be won.

I haven't seen many appeals, but when I vote to uphold a comrel
decision typically it is fairly obvious that something wrong was done,
and I'm more interested in whether the person involved acknowledges
that what they did was wrong and that they intend to not continue to
do it.

In the well over 100 posts and IRC logs that this general topic has
attracted I've seen all kinds of things:

1.  Arguments about whether complaints about people should be handled
in public or private.

2.  Arguments about whether we should be concerned about anybody's
non-technical behavior at all.

3.  Arguments about the process.

4.  Arguments that Gentoo would be better off if only person A were a developer.

5.  Arguments that Gentoo would be better off if only persons B and C
were still developers, apparently setting aside the fact that when
person C last quit they expressed that it was in part out of
frustration that person B was even allowed to post on the lists.

6.  Arguments that because we haven't kicked out everybody who does
anything wrong we can't kick out anybody who does anything wrong.

7.  Suggestions that there are conspiracies or personal biases or that
Gentoo devs don't care about anybody who isn't a dev or that nobody is
interested in recruiting/leading/whatevering.

8.  People complaining that Comrel does too much.

9.  People complaining that comrel does too little.

The one thing I haven't seen is anybody saying, "Ok, maybe I blew it,
and I'm sorry, I promise I won't do it again."  And, honestly, when I
see an appeal that is probably the one thing I'm most interested in
seeing.

Sure, if there were no evidence that somebody did something wrong then
I would back them up in an appeal.  However, the fact is that most of
us blow it at one point or another and the thing that
recruiters/comrel/council/etc end up looking for is signs that
somebody is committed to following the CoC in the future, regardless
of what has happened in the past.


-- 
Rich