Hi! Thanks for sending this out Ian, part of this matches exactly what I've been thinking for a long time, and the reason for my continued public opposition and deep dissatisfaction with the tech-ctte as a body. I've mentioned in the past [P] I'd put my thoughts in a more structured form, but I always find this topic to be too exhausting and demotivating.
[P] <https://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2018/08/msg00083.html> On Mon, 2019-05-13 at 15:28:11 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > Rather than see the TC's role enhanced, I would like to abolish it and > replace it with something completely different. Full ack! And like Ian, I pretty much have a problem with the structure and the body, not its members! Some of the problems I see myself which I've probably covered in the past are: * It has multiple conflicting roles (arbiter of disputes, mediator of conflicts, advice giver, etc.), so there's always the worry that something brought forward might be morphed/redirected/switched into one of the other powers, which can bring unanticipated power dynamics (f.ex. I don't think mediation can work well or at all when the mediating party has also the power to adjudicate). - If it was just an advisory board of elders/oracles or similar, with no powers of authority, besides the ones coming from knowledge, experience, track record, etc., it would seem perfectly fine for any party, including, say the policy editors, to request advice on contentious or uncertain issues from that advisory board, because it would be just another input to consider when doing the actual decision. - If it was a social-ctte (not arbiters but mediators or resolvers of conflict, w/o authority) to deal with interpersonal conflicts, that would also seem fine, and my take is that the different parties might be more open to be mediated this way. * It has the power to impose final decisions into others: - While not being involved (as a body) in the design nor the implementation, nor long-term maintenance, nor any consequence and fallout from those, which seems completely unfair within the confines of a volunteer project. - Which also seems like a way to sidestep one of the core tenets of the project ("volunteers cannot be forced to do anything"), which might force them to do things they otherwise would not do, and giving them pretty much the options of complying or stepping down. * When conflicts are brought up, in most cases they are at a point where the positions of the opposing factions/parties are so hardened, and/or communication has broken down so badly, that a decision will just be a win/lose scenario, which further destroys/erodes the social fabric of the project, bringing with it possibly rancour and hard to repair relationships between members in the project. * Reaching good decisions or deciding at all is important, but how we reach them is IMO as important, or more (the ends do not justify the means): - Forced decisions coming out of the tech-ctte, by way of wielding authority instead of convincing arguments and wide adoption, means they are way less legitimate than ones that would have been reached by (rough) consensus, or incremental adoption. * It still has the very unfair power imbalance I pointed out some years ago, about a GR requiring a super-majority to override its decisions. * This is a body composed of members that come and go, these might have wide experience in Debian in general (although not necessarily) or might had expertise in specific fields. The problem is that this body gets unbounded topic issues about anything. You cannot expect anyone w/ no prior experience to have "taste" or "intuition" about things they have not experienced/practiced for a long time. This is not, say, a java-ctte composed of Java experts. * It is a self-selected body, where things like being uncomfortable with or not being able to work with other specific members, might bias the selection process, while this body is supposed to serve the project interests at large and not the individual body members'. (And to be clear having a body with members that cannot or do not enjoy working together would be pretty terrible, but given the purpose of the body, having that limit its composition seems pretty bad too.) * Most decisions are not just technical decisions, in many/most cases the decisions have answers that are all correct, but it just depends on the weight of specific trade-offs. How those are weighted depends heavily on each individual. This also seems rather unfair, as it's taking the natural and expected biases of a small set of people in the project and forcing them into the entire project. Thanks, Guillem
