(Please reply on the gentoo-project list, I have set the Reply-To header for this mail appropriately).
=== TL;DR: - Does GLEP39 still serve all the needs of Gentoo? Devrel useful? - How to improve ourselves as a distribution (technical) and as people (personal interactions)? - Would EVERY developer please start acting professionally in all fora? === I would like us to thank (and remember those no longer with us) all of the past trustees and council members (a near-complete list is included as footnote [9]), for what they have done to try and grow the distribution. Regardless of whoever who decides to run for council and trustees this year, I would like to ask developers and foundation members to look at the history of Gentoo, prior councils and prior trustees, and ask themselves: What value does the distribution, Council, and Trustees provide to you? Why they are voting for any given candidate; is this the best for the future of Gentoo, or does it really even matter? Of candidates: Is it because of their technical prowess; ability to reach compromises; they can manage people well; possibly because you simply like or respect them; or because they're a hothead and you want to shake things up? Regardless of why you pick them, all of the above are things they may have to do on the council and trustees. I have contributed just over a decade of my life to Gentoo at this point, many times choosing consulting work or jobs because they enabled me to contribute more. I'm one of the very few developers that has been both a council member and a trustee, the others are: dberkholz, seemant, swift, agriffis, azarah, wolf31o2 In 2006, I ran for council, on a platform of improving the security of the Portage tree, via my tree-signing GLEPs. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/39928/focus=40610 I would call that project a long-term failure; the standards were completed, but like many GLEPs, mostly become forgotten and left by the wayside. In that original goal, I would consider my term on the council to be a failure, but extremely enlightening as to the politics and human aspect of a technical organization. I left at the end of my term, not seeking re-election. In 2009, I ran for trustees on a platform of radical transparency, that manifesto is also still available http://dev.gentoo.org/~robbat2/robbat2-foundation2009-manifesto.txt My goals were somewhat less quantifiable at the time, but I feel that I did help bring trustees to the same well-documented level as council; our financial & legal affairs are in good shape (many thanks to quantumsummers), and well-visible to the member base (yes, I would like a return to visible quarterly accounting or more detailed granularity, but we don't have that many transactions). I ran again successfully in 2011, because I wasn't done my work yet. I choose to not nominate anybody for either body this time; not because I have no faith in my fellow developers, but because I think we as a distribution have needs beyond our present structure of Council and Trustees, *Rel and the projects. Many of our early organizational issues have been replaced with those of a more mature organization. I think to a degree, we have grown beyond GLEP39. Go ahead, read GLEP39 again, and think about it from the perspective of a new(er) developer, vs. The Old Ones (as I saw it put recently). Now go to the projects that you're in, and tell me, when was the last time you had a real discussion about who lead a given project (the GLEP was careful to say 'selection' rather than 'election'). Does who "leads" a project actually matter in all cases? If a more established dev refuses a change, what can you do? The council, originally founded as technical body in 2005, has been running for 8 years, and in that time GLEP submissions have been replaced by EAPI changes to a minor degree, but overall we are no longer adapting to change as we once were. GLEP submissions have dropped dramatically, and instead we have a lot less highly visible change (unless it breaks things). Does this mean I expect everything to be a GLEP? No, the GLEP process in itself can be a hindrance to getting what you want done, and regardless of how great an idea it is, it doesn't guarantee adoption. Should we scrap GLEPs entirely? No, we should push even more of our changes through them, because they are a lot less personal than other proposals on the mailing lists. They are TECHNICAL improvements, and need to be considered PROFESSIONALLY, without any personal malice. Put the GLEPs to the council if they need more consensus, and the council needs to consider/approve them more often. If it's just smaller technical changes, let any developer feel free to do it; and take responsibility for their actions if they cause any breakage. Herds were created to group related ebuilds together (not developers), nor to stop development. Many times in our history, we have tried to grapple with the human problems in our distribution, many times unsuccessfully. I was there when: - The Zynot Fork (2003) - The Ombudsman position (GLEP7) was formed due to the Zynot conflict - The first NFP board was formed (2004) - drobbins leaving Gentoo [the first time] (2005) - The "Gentoo Women" project (2006) with the Mens' Rights attacks. - Council implemented the first CoC & Proctors (2007) with early Paludis/EAPI conflicts. - Our corporation status was temporarily revoked (2008), and drobbins came back briefly. - Exherbo started/forked (2008) - LolGentoo/LolFlameeyes attack blogs (2008) - Gentoo Ten (2009) - The ongoing matters of the eudev fork & systemd-integration (the above are the ones that come to mind, I'm sure I'm missing many more). Various inappropriate, emotionally charged remarks on Gentoo-related blogs as well as official mailing lists: - Our inter-dev Israeli/Palestine conflict - "mips team killed the baby jesus" - "Over my dead CVS" - "Ten Ways PMS Raped your Baby" - "the council needs to grow a pair" (apologies to geoman, flameeyes, ciaranm, wolf31o2 and other developers for the example usage). Many of these and more all showed us times where we had problems interacting with each other as decent and good people. The statements themselves were hostile, degrading & hurtful, but so was the environment that engendered them. We "solve" this, we tried to add the Ombudsman, CoC, Proctors, Developer Relations, User Relations (later also Community Relations), but they were primarily punitive measures. Many of these were founded/developed by the Council, as extensions beyond the pre-existing devrel role (yes, it predates council). NONE of those measures really worked, many of them caused more dissent [1]. Even GLEP39 laid it out clearly: "Regardless of whether or not it is justified, devrel is loathed by many in its enforcement role." Instead, I would like to call on every developer, foundation member, and general member of the community, to stand up for being professional, and hold all other developers to the same standard. Think to yourself: "If I said $X to my boss or underlings at work, would I get fired or sued for abuse or harassment?" Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaqpoeVgr8U&feature=player_embedded It's the head of the Australian Armed Forces encouraging everybody to take a stand against sexual harassment. (Apologies to those to the deaf members of the community, I could only find a partial transcript here [2]) The Internet remembers a lot of things, even when you think it's not being logged, and your past will come back to you; clean up your act before it's too late to save yourself. If you think you're going to take whatever results you get from your statements, and continue to be hostile, then GTFO. If anybody else has other suggestions how we can improve the distribution, beyond dropping devrel from GLEP39, I'm all ears. [1] "If You Won't Play Nice I'll Take My Ball And Go Home.", Andrew Trelane vs. Ciaranm (2009) http://www.trelane.net/blog/trelane/2009/09/if_you_wont_play_nice_ill_take_my_ball_and_go_home?page=4 [2] "The Standard You Walk Past is the Standard You Accept", Rebecca Watson, partial transcript and commentary on sexual harassment in the Australian Military (2013) http://skepchick.org/2013/06/the-standard-you-walk-past-is-the-standard-you-accept/ [9] Past Council & trustees Past council members -------------------- (sorted by meeting attendance) 77 betelgeuse 45 dberkholz 38 ulm 37 chainsaw 31 dertobi123 30 scarabeus 29 vapier 28 lu_zero 25 jmbsvicetto 24 solar 24 grobian 21 leio 18 flameeyes 14 wired 14 halcy0n 13 wolf31o2 13 robbat2 13 Kugelfang 13 KingTaco 12 SwifT 12 jokey 12 ferringb 11 williamh 11 seemant 11 Koon 11 kloeri 11 hwoarang 11 dev-zero 11 calchan 10 cardoe 9 agriffis 8 UberLord 8 azarah 8 amne 6 patrick 1 jaervosz Past trustees ------------- (Many of the early years of foundation, there was not good recording, so I don't have a complete list of meeting attendance, or even meetings prior to 2008) 2008-present (alphabetical): dabbott fmccor g2boojum neddyseagoon quantumsummers rich0 robbat2 tgall_foo tsunam wltjr 2006 trustees (semi-alphabetical): http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/399 g2boojum mcummings seemant stuart wolf31o2 rl03 (seemant resigned 2 days after being elected) pauldv (stuart resigned 1 month after being elected) The first elected trustees in 2005 (alphabetical): http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/252 carpaski cshields dmwaters dostrow g2boojum jhuebel klieber kumba pylon ramereth seemant spyderous (now known as dberkholz) swift The original NFP board in 2004 (alphabetical): http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.nfp/72 agriffis azarah carpaski dmwaters g2boojum klieber method pauldv pfeifer seemant swift zhen -- Robin Hugh Johnson Gentoo Linux: Developer, Trustee & Infrastructure Lead E-Mail : robb...@gentoo.org GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85
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