On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 09:30:54PM -0700, Ross Vandegrift wrote: > Effective today, I'm resigning as cloud team delegate. I started a new job, > and am no longer eligible due to our conflict of interest prohibition. Since > very little of my cloud team work required delegation, I don't plan on > changing > my involvement. I've had less time for Debian in recent months, but hope > that'll change in the future.
Thanks for your work in the past, Ross, and congratulations on the new job. I think now might be a reasonable time to suggest that we revisit our ban on allowing DPL delegates to work for cloud providers. The rationale for it is a concern over potential conflicts of interest, which is entirely valid. However, experience over the past several years has provided ample evidence that the opportunities for such conflicts of interest to actually impair the judgement of a delegate are very rare. As long as a delegate's relationship to their employer is known ahead of time, that delegate can recuse themselves from any specific decision making process that may be influenced by their employer. I believe that people who work for a cloud service provider are likely to represent some of the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable members of our community on cloud related topics. Excluding them from consideration for our DPL delegations removes key members from our pool of candidates for this role and does not provide any benefit that can't be attained using less drastic measures. noah
