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List:       gentoo-project
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Council 2014 / 2015 election
From:       Rich Freeman <rich0 () gentoo ! org>
Date:       2014-07-04 13:33:56
Message-ID: CAGfcS_ngB78x7BrVCpQx1w2FvkfJoONCM71-eDrKY=o0GKyFdA () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 6:34 AM, Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 07/04/14 08:59, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
>>
>> The potential for "conflict of interests" is the reason any candidate
>> that is a member of ComRel (in the past devrel) gets flagged, so that
>> voters are aware of that. That is the same reason Trustees are flagged.
>> This fear of a ComRel "cabal" in my view seems to have been born of a
>> fear or distrust of some developers, mostly more recent developers, that
>> either don't know or don't understand ComRel and tend to see if as a
>> "old men club" that is "closed" to them. I think it's a pity such a
>> sentiment was born and has grown.
>
> Blame your predecessors who followed a scorched earth policy - it'll
> take lots of time to gain trust
>

Honestly, I'd be a proponent of making ComRel more transparent in
terms of its constitution.  It deals with sensitive issues and I don't
have a problem with the details of what they do being held in
confidence unless the parties involved want them to be public.
However, there is no need for the actual organization of the team to
be non-open.

I'll just toss out some ideas and maybe some will be helpful.  Please
note that I'm not suggesting that anybody is really trying to keep
secrets here - it is just easier to have a discussion and not write up
minutes than it is to announce things on lists, and so things probably
happen that way.

1.  Announced elections, membership changes, etc.  When these things
happen, publish it on -project, or at least on the team page.  Make it
easy for everybody to see what is going on with the
membership/leadership of ComRel.  There is no need for the annual lead
election to be secret.

2.  Announced and open regular meetings.  Meetings could have an open
and a closed component if actual cases are to be discussed.  Things
like policy can be discussed in the open.  I don't know how meetings
are held now, but the closed part can happen wherever things happen
today, and the open part could be in #gentoo-meetings or such with
published logs.  Maybe you meet for 30 minutes in the open and then 30
minutes closed.  Or maybe every other meeting is open.  Figure out
what works for the team, but with the goal of giving the community
more insight and influence over anything which isn't personal.   The
Trustees routinely deal with closed bugs that contain personal or
financial details we don't want on the Internet, but any actual
decisions are in the open.  So, everybody can see that we're spending
$500 on some server, without seeing scans of checks and credit card
numbers.

3.  This is a bigger change, but I'd advocate doing with ComRel what
was done last year with QA.  Have the team self-governing for the most
part, but with the Council having to confirm the lead and basically
having the effective ability to take over if necessary.  I'd highly
discourage the Council ever doing that, but I'd look at it a bit like
being able to Impeach or Recall an elected official - just a way to
have accountability and the mandate that goes along with that.

All of that goes far beyond whether there is overlap in Council/team membership.

QA has basically been doing all three of these and I think it has been
a good change.  Sure, not everybody agrees with everything the new
team has been doing, but the fact is that at least everybody knows
what is going on, who is in charge, and how they got to be in charge.
I think those are steps in the right direction.

Rich


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