Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 14:39 -0400, john palmieri wrote: I appreciate that we are talking about the technical board as an open question but I fear it could be used as a political tool to override the decision making process that already exists in the meritocracy. By giving a board this power you basically allow people who may not even be active in various projects to decide what is best for that project. This is one of the things that has happened in OpenJDK. Oracle unilaterally announced a new governing board mandating 3/5 of whom had nothing to do with the project and/or were from companies not contributing to the project. And then they started making technical pronouncements about the future direction of Java 8 with no input from anyone. (fortunately this has no impact on anyone working on the IcedTea build of GPL OpenJDK that we all use and where all the innovation is happening anyway, but it's really pissing off community contributors who would like their work to go upstream instead of living on the outside. Jeesh) AfC Sydney signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
Thanks for the responses, Ryan. Ryan Lortie wrote: [removing foundation-announce from the cc:] hi Allan, On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 14:59 +0100, Allan Day wrote: * Do you have any concrete ideas of what 'strong and coordinated technical leadership' would involve? It sounds very nice and all, but I'd like to hear some specifics before I cast my vote. ;) I think it's premature to say this is the solution which is why I've limited myself to identifying a (perceived) problem. I am simply stating that we should move in a direction of more coordinated technical decision-making. That said, it's true that I've had some ideas of how this *might* look. The most obvious solution to me is the creation of a technical board, directly elected with membership restrictions by affiliation (basically, just like the foundation board). This board (in conjunction with the release team) would be actively involved in the feature planning that takes place at the start of each cycle. The board would necessarily improve communication between the hackers of different companies serving on it. It would also serve a 'crisis response' role by acting as the point of contact for people who feel that they've hit a brick wall with a maintainer or when a long annoying technical debate is going on in the community with no clear consensus. The scary part: this board would be given a stick: the ability, by supermajority (2/3rds?), to veto maintainer decisions. Of course there is quite a debate about if it's desirable (or even possible) to use the stick in certain situations. The hope is that maintainers would generally respect the decisions of the technical board. Peer/community pressure alone may be enough here. The board would also clearly be aware of its own limitations and would act accordingly. Another possibility is to empower the release team, identify them as the 'crisis response' point of contact and ask them to be more proactive with respect to the above listed situations. After discussions with Frederic Peters, it is unclear if some of the existing members of the release team would be comfortable with these new roles. I had intended to avoid direct discussion of your proposal, since this is supposed to be a candidacy discussion. Others have pitched in with their opinions though, so I'll do the same. ;) The current governance issues that we're currently facing are, in my opinion, something like this: * There have been cases where patches have been refused by a maintainer, and that the contributor has felt they have no recourse. * Maintainers sometimes refuse changes which are in accordance with the design direction of the overall project. This isn't good for our user experience. * There is an increasing perception, I think, that GNOME lacks independence: that it is not an open space and that it is not a good place to collaborate. This is extremely concerning, particularly because it serves as a disincentive to potential contributors. Why would a company or a volunteer invest in a project which appears to be controlled by people who lurk in the shadows and which it is difficult (if not impossible) to know how to influence? * Relatedly, we don't do a good job of communicating where the project is going to our partners and to potential contributors. Some of these issues are more pressing than others, but I'm certainly very concerned about some of them, and I'm clearly not the only one. Our community and our status as a open space are what makes GNOME great; that those things are perceived to be in decline is troublesome indeed. As much as I think we should tackle these issues, I think we need to be very careful about introducing new kinds of bureaucracy, however. J5 and Andrew Cowie have already expressed some of the issues in this thread (I agree with them), so I won't repeat them. To summarise my position, though: I don't think we want to introduce new governing bodies that compete with the ways of working we already have. Instead, we should aim to temper our current ways of working to make them more transparent, comprehensible and accessible to outsiders. The question is, how should we do that? First and foremost, we have to define GNOME's products. This really is essential, since we can't arbitrate decisions until we have set out exactly what those decisions are supposed to be achieving. Furthermore, if we don't define our products, any new governance body is likely to become a battleground in the attempt to define what GNOME should be. We'd simply be relocating the contest rather than resolving it. In the process of producing that definition, we need to clearly set out what the role of our platform is, as well as what consumers of that platform can expect from us as a project. Once we've defined what we're producing, I think it would be an excellent idea to establish an arbitration process for when irreconcilable difficulties occur with maintainers. It is
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
Le dimanche 22 mai 2011 à 20:00 -0400, Ryan Lortie a écrit : name: Ryan Lortie nick: desrt affiliation: Codethink Limited I am announcing my intention to run as a candidate in the upcoming election for the board of directors. [snip] Isn't your candidacy just a attempt to gain power in order to organize the next GUADEC in Canada? Lionel, canadians-with-hidden-agenda hunter ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
It is wise to leave most technical decisions to the people who will do the technical work, but this is not a rule, just a good default. These people will generally try to decide based on the practical usefulness and popularity of the one project they are working on. For most questions, that's the right way to decide them; but occasionally a technical decision has broader or deeper implications. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use free telephony http://directory.fsf.org/category/tel/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
Hi Ryan, Ryan Lortie wrote: name: Ryan Lortie nick: desrt affiliation: Codethink Limited I am announcing my intention to run as a candidate in the upcoming election for the board of directors. (( me )) I've been around the GNOME project for a bit more than half a decade. I started in some rather user-facing parts of the desktop and quickly moved down the stack. Recently, I spend most of my days hanging out on D-Bus and messing around with GLib. I created GVariant, dconf and GSettings and have had a hand in some other technologies used in GNOME such as GVFS, the GIO networking APIs, GDBus, GApplication and many others. I've avoided running for the board in the past because I'm the sort of person who doesn't like meetings and I've always been a bit disorganised. I'm generally happier when I'm hacking on something. I'm running now because I have a platform (that you may or may not agree with). (( the platform )) The GNOME project is at a singularly interesting point in its history. We just shocked the world with the level of quality of the GNOME 3.0 release. Few would disagree that we are going through a period of growth and change as a project, but it seems that there is some disagreement on exactly what that means. For a while the foundation board has largely taken a hands-off approach when it comes to technical decisions. In my opinion this has allowed a number of problems to develop. I believe that GNOME is in need of strong and coordinated technical governance, firmly rooted in the structure of the community. I want to start a discussion about the best way to make this happen. I strongly support the GNOME philosophy of maintainers having control over their own modules. I believe, however, that this situation occasionally causes friction when trying to push large changes to the platform and desktop. There have also been cases when outsiders to the project have encountered problems with a particular maintainer and felt that they have no recourse. I want to investigate methods by which we can balance maintainer autonomy with the benefits of more coordinated technical leadership. Finally, I'm interested in the strength of GNOME as a community project. I think community projects are at their best when the power to control the future of the project lies clearly within the community and not consolidated within a single entity. I believe this is another argument for strong community technical governance. (( in summary )) Please don't vote for me because you recognise my name and think that I wrote some nice software or because the other candidates don't have as nice of a free t-shirt collection. I expect the ideas here to be a bit controversial. I'm happy to provide clarification on my thoughts. Please only vote for me if you believe that I am right. Thank you I do think that we should do more to communicate GNOME's goals (mainly by clearly defining our products) and to make it clear how the project is organised. I also agree that it would be useful to have a discussion about maintainership. Some kind of arbitration might be helpful when there are issues involving specific modules, for example. That said, some questions: * Do you have any concrete ideas of what 'strong and coordinated technical leadership' would involve? It sounds very nice and all, but I'd like to hear some specifics before I cast my vote. ;) * If you are elected, you will have to fulfill your role as a board member, yet you have not mentioned anything to do with your suitability for this post. Indeed, it almost makes me think that you are unsuitable for the position! So, do you think you will be able to do a good job in the day to day running of the Foundation? * I presume that your candidacy is an attempt to gain a mandate for the changes you are proposing, yet I wonder whether it will count for much without the support of the release team and maintainers. Have you had any discussions with either of the above about your ideas? * Following on from the above: do you think that you personally need to be on the board for these changes to take place? Why not just get a discussion going and come up with a plan? Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 14:59 +0100, Allan Day wrote: snip That said, some questions: * Do you have any concrete ideas of what 'strong and coordinated technical leadership' would involve? It sounds very nice and all, but I'd like to hear some specifics before I cast my vote. ;) * If you are elected, you will have to fulfill your role as a board member, yet you have not mentioned anything to do with your suitability for this post. Indeed, it almost makes me think that you are unsuitable for the position! So, do you think you will be able to do a good job in the day to day running of the Foundation? To be honest, that's something we (myself as a member of the Board, and Ryan) have been discussing over the past couple of weeks. I would think that it does need to be discussed, but I don't think that I agree with Ryan's assertion that a technical board is needed. I poked holes in his proposal, and I'm sure we'll discuss it more in private before putting the results forward for discussion within the community. * I presume that your candidacy is an attempt to gain a mandate for the changes you are proposing, yet I wonder whether it will count for much without the support of the release team and maintainers. Have you had any discussions with either of the above about your ideas? I would hope it doesn't give a mandate, as the proposals seem hazy at best right now. * Following on from the above: do you think that you personally need to be on the board for these changes to take place? Why not just get a discussion going and come up with a plan? I'd also be interested in knowing that :) Cheers ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
[removing foundation-announce from the cc:] hi Allan, On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 14:59 +0100, Allan Day wrote: * Do you have any concrete ideas of what 'strong and coordinated technical leadership' would involve? It sounds very nice and all, but I'd like to hear some specifics before I cast my vote. ;) I think it's premature to say this is the solution which is why I've limited myself to identifying a (perceived) problem. I am simply stating that we should move in a direction of more coordinated technical decision-making. That said, it's true that I've had some ideas of how this *might* look. The most obvious solution to me is the creation of a technical board, directly elected with membership restrictions by affiliation (basically, just like the foundation board). This board (in conjunction with the release team) would be actively involved in the feature planning that takes place at the start of each cycle. The board would necessarily improve communication between the hackers of different companies serving on it. It would also serve a 'crisis response' role by acting as the point of contact for people who feel that they've hit a brick wall with a maintainer or when a long annoying technical debate is going on in the community with no clear consensus. The scary part: this board would be given a stick: the ability, by supermajority (2/3rds?), to veto maintainer decisions. Of course there is quite a debate about if it's desirable (or even possible) to use the stick in certain situations. The hope is that maintainers would generally respect the decisions of the technical board. Peer/community pressure alone may be enough here. The board would also clearly be aware of its own limitations and would act accordingly. Another possibility is to empower the release team, identify them as the 'crisis response' point of contact and ask them to be more proactive with respect to the above listed situations. After discussions with Frederic Peters, it is unclear if some of the existing members of the release team would be comfortable with these new roles. * If you are elected, you will have to fulfill your role as a board member, yet you have not mentioned anything to do with your suitability for this post. Indeed, it almost makes me think that you are unsuitable for the position! So, do you think you will be able to do a good job in the day to day running of the Foundation? I would not take election lightly. I understand that the board was reduced to seven people to give each member more of a sense of individual ownership of the business of the board and this is a responsibility that I would take quite seriously. As mentioned in my candidacy statement, I'm not the most organised person I know. I am quite good, however, at taking on a task and getting it done. * I presume that your candidacy is an attempt to gain a mandate for the changes you are proposing, yet I wonder whether it will count for much without the support of the release team and maintainers. Have you had any discussions with either of the above about your ideas? I've been loosely discussing this topic with very many people over the past year and a half or more. Most discussion that I've had on this topic has been in person at events. I've talked to quite some maintainers, the former release manager and the new release manager. I've also talked to at least one other member of the release team. I've also talked to our downstreams and other outsiders to the project about their problems. By and large, the impression I get from most people when discussing this is that they believe that a problem exists and that we should solve it. Individual maintainers tend to believe (more or less) that since they are not part of the problem, the solution is unlikely to impact them in a negative way. Some maintainers have expressed scepticism about the negative impact that this proposal might have on maintainer motivation (or the motivation of their employers). It's possible that my selection of conversation partners is not representative of the project. * Following on from the above: do you think that you personally need to be on the board for these changes to take place? Why not just get a discussion going and come up with a plan? Very many of the people that I've talked to about this issue (particularly recently, due to the timing) suggested that I run for the board so that I could advance this issue. I agree that my election to the board would not be strictly required to this end. At the same time, this is not the only issue that motivates me to want to be a member of the board. My rushed candidacy statement certainly focused on this issue, but it's not like it would be my only concern. I did intend to start a discussion. Cheers ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
hi Philip, (keeping in mind that creating a technical board is very much an open question) On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 19:48 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote: - Will all foundation members get a single vote? That was indeed my intention. I think your other proposals are too difficult to implement and possibly even undesirable. Do you have some others ideas about how it might be possible? Cheers ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 11:00 -0400, Ryan Lortie wrote: On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 14:59 +0100, Allan Day wrote: * Do you have any concrete ideas of what 'strong and coordinated technical leadership' would involve? It sounds very nice and all, but I'd like to hear some specifics before I cast my vote. ;) I think it's premature to say this is the solution which is why I've limited myself to identifying a (perceived) problem. I am simply stating that we should move in a direction of more coordinated technical decision-making. That said, it's true that I've had some ideas of how this *might* look. The most obvious solution to me is the creation of a technical board, directly elected with membership restrictions by affiliation (basically, just like the foundation board). Let me first point out that I think that such a technical board is a very great idea and that I do believe that we should put it in place as soon as possible. Now my question. How would this technical board be elected? Who will get voting rights? - Will all foundation members get a single vote? - Will projects get a vote too? And if so, at which point will a project get a vote? As soon as it's part of GNOME's modules? Its external dependencies too? Who gets to cast a project's vote (its maintainer?)? - Will GNOME's (event) sponsors get a vote? - Will companies involved in GNOME's development get a vote? Basically the question is: how do we identify the stakeholders and how do we make sure that all stakeholders are appropriately represented at this technical board? I fear that if we don't allow representation of such stakeholders, that the legitimacy of the technical board wont be strong enough to technically steer GNOME in such a way that it'll make a real difference. [cut] I did intend to start a discussion. Good! Thanks a lot Ryan! Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 13:51 -0400, Ryan Lortie wrote: hi Philip, (keeping in mind that creating a technical board is very much an open question) On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 19:48 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote: - Will all foundation members get a single vote? That was indeed my intention. I think your other proposals are too difficult to implement and possibly even undesirable. Do you have some others ideas about how it might be possible? Yes I think that a project should get a vote and that its maintainer could be assigned to decide how the project will vote. I also think that a company having five or more developers assigned to working on GNOME modules is in my opinion a formidable stakeholder who should get votes per group of (let's say) five such developers. A substantial amount of work should be done yearly by each developer, of course. How to measure this is something I have no immediate idea for (amount of bugs fixed, amount of commits, features, involvement at other places, consensus, etc). I'm sure other people will have ideas (and measuring can always be improved at a later time). I think that event sponsors and other sponsors should not get a vote (for the technical board), but they could or should be involved in Foundation matters. Although I believe that this is De Facto already the case. I'm afraid that letting only foundation members get votes that populism or time-of-the-year voting can cause a too big changes to the project. It's good to have other stakeholders involved too (in my opinion). Projects and companies putting human resources at work on GNOME modules are in my opinion important stakeholders, and I think we should respect their right to be involved in forming technical boards. ps. A vote does not mean being part of the technical board, but it makes it possible for you to vote for your representative (of course). Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof freelance software developer Codeminded BVBA - http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
I appreciate that we are talking about the technical board as an open question but I fear it could be used as a political tool to override the decision making process that already exists in the meritocracy. By giving a board this power you basically allow people who may not even be active in various projects to decide what is best for that project. The great things about the one technical board we already have - the release team - is that people can come and go based on their willingness to put in time and effort. There is no formal process to becoming a member and the members govern basically like any other FOSS project. Their criteria for including a technology in the module sets defers to the what the community is currently using. Their only power is to formally compile the lists of what the community has already decided. If we start electing people to make these technical decisions we run the risk of giving powers of selection to those who may not be qualified to make those calls. Further more, removing such people in a timely manner would be subject to bylaws and could become a source of distraction. Major power needs to stay in the hands of those who are doing the work in the community, not those who can come up with some wedge issue to get elected. I suspect some people think the Foundation Board is some sort of all powerful entity that has the ability to make major decisions with little oversite. The truth is, it has a very limited scope of powers. It controls the budget so can approve or disapprove use of resources for some technical matters such as hackfests (though I am not aware of any hackfests that have been rejected). It is also highly respected in the community and as such can bring up issues such as creating a technical board without being shouted down. Most of the board's work is actually quite mundane - making sure we are in compliance with laws, handing issues that can't become public for various reasons, precuring insurance for events, writing up press releases, liaisoning with industry, etc. With that said, it does have one power that we need to watch out for - bringing up votes to create groups that have more power than the board it self. It goes without saying, please think carefully about this direction. While I applaud a new board that wants to expand the effectiveness of the formal structures within the Foundation, it needs to be tempered with humility and wisdom, and not forget that the community is ultimately where direction needs to be set. On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Ryan Lortie de...@desrt.ca wrote: hi Philip, (keeping in mind that creating a technical board is very much an open question) On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 19:48 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote: - Will all foundation members get a single vote? That was indeed my intention. I think your other proposals are too difficult to implement and possibly even undesirable. Do you have some others ideas about how it might be possible? Cheers ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
Hi Ryan, On Mon 23 May 2011 02:00, Ryan Lortie de...@desrt.ca writes: For a while the foundation board has largely taken a hands-off approach when it comes to technical decisions. In my opinion this has allowed a number of problems to develop. Can you mention some examples? I believe, however, that this situation occasionally causes friction when trying to push large changes to the platform and desktop. There have also been cases when outsiders to the project have encountered problems with a particular maintainer and felt that they have no recourse. I think I'm missing the back-story here. What would you do with this power? Andy -- http://wingolog.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie
Hi Ryan, Thanks for your answers. They were thoughtful, as you are. On Mon 23 May 2011 22:38, Ryan Lortie de...@desrt.ca writes: More generally, though, during the last cycle I've heard a lot of talk from many different people about many decisions that seemed to be made in an opaque way. The removal of screensavers and the addition of the gnome-session 'fail whale' come to mind as two decisions that I've heard a lot of complaints about. I'm not saying that I disagree with those choices or that every single decision should be run past some central body, but it would be nice if such a thing was even a possibility and it would be _really_ nice if I could point people there when they share their complaints with me. Clarity and cohesion are laudable goals, but I think that you are misled when you suggest hierarchy as the answer. Free software means different things to different folks, so I won't presume to say what it means to you; but to me it's just as much about process as it is about product. I love hacking, and being able to hack with others, but without coercion or control, is one of the most attractive things about our movement (if you consider it as such, and I do). I guess what I'm saying is that IMHO you would do better to focus your considerable powers towards more communication, and better collective decision-making among maintainers, than on the creation of a small group of structurally empowered people. (Of course, this is not to suggest that everyone's opinion have the same weight. Anyone with half a brain will listen very carefully when Owen speaks, for example.) Regards, Andy -- http://wingolog.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
