On 14 November 2013 23:12, Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Ben de Groot <yng...@gentoo.org> wrote: >>> I said >> As it is always happy to point out, Council doesn't see itself as >> leadership, just as a supreme court of appeal, when everything else >> seems to have failed. It likes to get involved as little as possible. > > The last time I talked to Council she said that she doesn't like it > when you anthropomorphize her. > > Certainly I stated in my manifesto that I believe that Council members > SHOULD be leaders, and should not limit their leadership of the distro > to casting votes. That's why we're chatting on a list, and I'm not > sitting back waiting for you to put this issue on a Council agenda.
That is nice of you, but many of your fellow councilmen (historically, as well as currently) do not hold similar views, as was made painfully clear to me a few years ago. >>> We >>> also have Comrel, which is a better starting point for cases >>> concerning individuals vs policies. >> >> This also displays little real leadership. It concerns itself with >> conflict resolution, with various degrees of success. (I still have a >> bad taste in my mouth from my past dealings with that institution.) > > Well, that is the role of Comrel. I don't expect it to decide whether > developers can touch each other's ebuilds to add systemd units to > them, etc. However, if the Council establishes a policy then Comrel > should certainly take issue with devs that ignore that policy. Comrel > certainly can show leadership when it comes to how it operates, > facilitating better relations in the community in general, etc. > >> >> The costs are higher than the benefits, in my opinion. Where are the >> use cases for this high-cost solution that is being pushed upon us? > > Where are the costs for this high-cost solution that you purport the > existence of? Just what about this solution is difficult to maintain? > I keep hearing that it is painful, but I haven't seen specific > examples of HOW it is painful. See how much effort is expended on this, and how many maintainers are being involved: https://bugs.gentoo.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=ALL+multilib I was particularly hit by this as maintainer of freetype, see bugs 455070 and 459352 for some of the mess that could have been avoided. >>> The problem with having top-down leadership in a volunteer-based >>> organization is that it tends to drive away anybody who doesn't agree >>> with the leader. If a supreme leader said "mgorny has the right >>> solution to multilib - everybody is going to work to implement it" >>> that would probably cause more harm than good. Everybody wants a >>> supreme leader until the leader backs something they oppose. >> >> But what's the alternative? Having a few dozen self-appointed leaders >> doing whatever they want, and often taking things in opposing >> directions. It's not top-down leadership, but rule of the strongest. > > When you have officially-appointed leaders they usually tend to be the > same people who would otherwise be the self-appointed leaders. They > just have more power to kick everybody out who disagrees with them. > It is still the rule of the strongest. How did Linus become the > leader of Linux? He wrote it... At least there is one person in charge who sets a clear direction, and is accountable. > I used to get philosophical about things like this, but I think the > model Gentoo has is actually not a bad one. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one then. > In the end, stuff only > gets done if people write code. Your power in any FOSS project really > comes down to your ability to write code or convince others to write > code on your behalf. No, it's more about your ability to commit and get away with it. > We can argue about what piece of software is > conceptually the best, but implemented software will almost always win > over the unimplemented competitor, unless the merits of the competitor > are such that people will flock behind it and actually implement it. > > Rich > -- Cheers, Ben | yngwin Gentoo developer
