[gentoo-project] sam's 2022 council manifesto

[Sam James]

Hi!

I've refreshed my 2021 Council manifesto below for 2022-2023. I think it's hard to express explicit
policies in a manifesto because of how we operate in Gentoo (which is largely a good
thing! - we work by consensus) but it's important to share how I view things to help
voters decide.

Of course, I've participated in robbat2's questions thread on -project where
you can see some of my views on contemporary issues.

Or just ask me.

My priorities for the next year are continuing to grow Gentoo and tackling
general "global scope" bugs. Be it highly user-visible issues in individual
packages or bigger work like the libxcrypt project from the last year (which
we've pulled off with the help of dilfridge too).

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I'd like to represent Gentoo developers and the overall community in the 2022-2023 Gentoo Council.
Let me have a go at persuading you.

I've noticed some common themes during discussions. I've noticed a tendency to defer debate - which, on individual topics,
may seem reasonable at the time, but with a wider perspective, becomes problematic. I feel the council should have its eyes
on moving Gentoo forward.

One _forges_ consensus, it doesn't develop naturally, especially in a large project like ours. I want the council to be
front-and-centre in discussions about the future, not just the "boring last formality".

I consider myself in touch with various parts of the project; I don't just maintain my packages. My main philosophy is
'user-centric'. I keep an eye on bugs which are affecting users, I'm prominent in #gentoo (one of our main support venues).
I know what's bothering our userbase and I work to fix it.

Technical correctness? That's important to me (you can look at some of my commits for that), but so is being useful,
and keeping Gentoo practical (and fun for many of our users) to use! Sometimes we have to find a middle ground
between those and that's okay. If I had to give myself a 2-word bio, it'd be "ruthless pragmatist".

I hope I've managed to get across within my time in Gentoo so far that I care about fixing things. I care about
things working. I care about reaching compromise. I've mediated plenty of times between plenty of developers and
helped to reach a conclusion which everyone can be happy with.

Finally, if I haven't yet persuaded you enough to kindly include me on your ballot, you're very welcome to
message me publicly or privately with any questions you have.

best,
sam

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Online at https://dev.gentoo.org/~sam/txt/2022-council-manifesto.txt.