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The Rules (or Governance Model) Gentoo Operates Under

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khayyam
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Joined: 07 Jun 2012
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 8:44 pm Post subject:

John ... very briefly ... it would not be the first time in history that a legal system, set of rules, or what-have-you, were found to contain contradictions, and so be changed, re-constituted, etc. It also wouldn't be the first time in history that the expressed nature of a constitution, laws, etc, was found to be violated by parties who these rules were directed at (often the group entrusted to act in the name of those same rules). So, care needs to be taken here to deal with the principles involved, rather than the statutes themselves, or whether persons are acting in good faith in relation to those statutes. Also, the wording of some of those questions, specifically "do you believe that Gentoo prides itself on being" is altogether lacking in focus, and so open to interpretation. best ... khay

John R. Graham
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:07 pm Post subject:

Khay, Intentionally and for effect quoted directly from the Code of Conduct. However, I think you're missing my point. What was trying to ask is, is there, in fact, a rule or "set of rules" as you said that are being violated if developers take a purely technical action that is detrimental to the community as a whole? (I'm not saying that there shouldn't be, by the way.) So far, I can't put my finger on a single one, hence my questions. I also think I disagree somewhat with your broader point from earlier. Although it's true that none of us are free of constraints, to make an analogy from society as a whole, if I pay my bills on time, pay my taxes, abide by the traffic laws—in other words, obey all of the laws of the land—then, inside those constrains, must I be further constrained in every action to, "...work with the benefit of the community in mind..."? If I follow all the rules, can't I do what I want? Scratch an itch? Have fun? To bring the analogy home, as a Gentoo Developer, perhaps I'm really interested in package foo, although nobody (or almost nobody) else is. Despite this, I spend much of my time maintaining it, keeping it usable in Gentoo. I ignore bug reports on other packages that I have no interest in, but I hardly ever see any bug reports on foo for aforementioned reasons. In your opinion, am I a bad developer? Finally, I think I disagree with you that dealing with the principles is more important than dealing with the rules. If the individuals are, in fact operating completely within the rules, then what good does it do to chastise them? They are, essentially by definition, good actors. - John _________________ I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters.

ff11
l33t
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Joined: 10 Mar 2014
Posts: 664

Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:42 pm Post subject:

John R. Graham wrote:

Khay,
To bring the analogy home, as a Gentoo Developer, perhaps I'm really interested in package foo, although nobody (or almost nobody) else is. Despite this, I spend much of my time maintaining it, keeping it usable in Gentoo. I ignore bug reports on other packages that I have no interest in, but I hardly ever see any bug reports on foo for aforementioned reasons. In your opinion, am I a bad developer?

For me, it all the same opinion disagreeing to each other. Because if you make a job for just yourself, you keep for yourself, then when you share, you make it not just for you any more, otherwise why share it in the first place?
I can almost say that the selfishness of an opensource developer is not selfishness indeed, but definitely for the community.

Rad
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Joined: 11 Feb 2004
Posts: 401
Location: Bern, Switzerland

Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 10:47 pm Post subject:

khayyam wrote:

Now, merit ... I don't know who the person, or persons, were who codified gentoo's current statutes, and position papers, but I don't imagine they were qualified to do so, programmers don't tend to come from the social sciences.

So you really think groups of people -technical communities, Linux distributions, nations- should have to submit to their qualified social scientists to make their written rules for them?

I personally don't - no matter how many authors they can quote that are in agreement with each other. It might be a little different if you could provide scientific proof that their stance is correct; that inevitably and necessarily a thing "x" happening will result in "y" happening, under exact circumstances a,b,c. (And in this context, that this leads to contradiction or obvious problem in the Gentoo policy somehow?). But I kind-of doubt you'll be the first to actually legitimize many of the social sciences that way.

Either way, maybe you have some improvements to the Gentoo rules that you think you can recommend, but I think there are better places for these specifics, no?

Also, it at least seems to me that yngwin and the actually quite many other developers that apparently care about this issue are doing a quite a bit extra on top of what the policy requires (to figure out what we want and how to best solve this issue and stuff).

ff11
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 11:25 pm Post subject:

Rad wrote:

khayyam wrote:

I think that the question is far more deep than that. For me is not only about the dev make what want to the community, but the level of this and the consequence.
The preview example don't show the question on the true mark, then I will provide at least one:
* The sabotage of the kernel source from the kernel devs (this is shared, and a true selfishness) (http://linuxhelp.150m.com/jews/saboteurs.htm).
* The "hijacking of names" from the libav even when it is change the API/ABI (this is shared, and a true selfishness too).

For me is about that kind of thing that hurt the community (that when you are doing, you are a bad dev). And the gentoo community (and some devs inside of it) are concern that if we have or no some way of deal with it, if it happen here. And if we should have something or no. At least is my understand of the situation.

khayyam
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Joined: 07 Jun 2012
Posts: 6227
Location: Room 101

Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 12:52 am Post subject:

John R. Graham wrote:

Intentionally and for effect quoted directly from the Code of Conduct. However, I think you're missing my point. What was trying to ask is, is there, in fact, a rule or "set of rules" as you said that are being violated if developers take a purely technical action that is detrimental to the community as a whole? (I'm not saying that there shouldn't be, by the way.) So far, I can't put my finger on a single one, hence my questions.

John ... I think I got the point of your questions ... but would you say in absence of such a rule, or if such a rule was contradicted in some way, that this would validate something "detrimental"?

John R. Graham wrote:

I also think I disagree somewhat with your broader point from earlier. Although it's true that none of us are free of constraints, to make an analogy from society as a whole, if I pay my bills on time, pay my taxes, abide by the traffic laws—in other words, obey all of the laws of the land—then, inside those constrains, must I be further constrained in every action to, "...work with the benefit of the community in mind..."? If I follow all the rules, can't I do what I want? Scratch an itch? Have fun?

You seem to be confusing a number of things with your analogy, firstly, your positioning some set of rules (the "laws of the land") as meeting whats required of you, and then being "further constrained" by some other set of unrelated rules positioned as from some other domain (the "inside" and outside). So, your not really "following all the rules", because its somewhat like arguing that if you follow the rules of football you shouldn't be constrained by the rules of the road. Now, what they have in common is their relation to sets of rules created within social groups to achieve certain ends, and the rules of 'society' are in some regard the same rules expected of you within other social arrangements ... or they should be if those rules weren't conflated with paying your bills, taxes, etc (or, the rules of behaviour society takes to be just, expected, etc). All these are ethical as well as political questions, should you in fact pay tax, is that in fact socially beneficial, etc, etc ... so, as I was saying its not just about the rules themselves (because these in themselves are open to question) but the principles, reasoning, etc, involved in what underpins them, so for instance, if "work[ing] with the benefit of the community in mind" forecloses acting purely in ones self-interest, etc.

John R. Graham wrote:

To bring the analogy home, as a Gentoo Developer, perhaps I'm really interested in package foo, although nobody (or almost nobody) else is. Despite this, I spend much of my time maintaining it, keeping it usable in Gentoo. I ignore bug reports on other packages that I have no interest in, but I hardly ever see any bug reports on foo for aforementioned reasons. In your opinion, am I a bad developer?

Are you asking for my subjective opinion or some objective criteria by which this developer could be judged? If its the latter then I don't think one could be sufficiently developed to say from this particular analogy that we could set any judgement by it ... but if the former, then I don't see what's particularly wrong in this regard, she's just taking on a limited workload, with perhaps a limited relation to what the community is interested in, but from the description given there doesn't seem to be harm involved (and that is the basic premise of such a law, or judgement).

John R. Graham wrote:

Finally, I think I disagree with you that dealing with the principles is more important than dealing with the rules. If the individuals are, in fact operating completely within the rules, then what good does it do to chastise them? They are, essentially by definition, good actors.

I didn't say "more important" I said "care needs to be taken here to deal with the principles involved", because what are such rules based on? Being a 'good actor' isn't justification for acting in a certain way, because these are ethical questions as well as political ones. If the law states you should act against your conscience then you had damn well better not ... in fact law (or the principles that give us reason to construct law) provides confirmation, and emphasises, not to do so. So, in short the law is not a matter of following what is stipulated, it includes principles which you must take to be consistent in order to act. One of those principles would be that besides acting in good faith you would need to also be acting in a way that doesn't involve contraction. Anyhow, this isn't about "chastising", its about the arrangements, rules, etc, we construct, and use to, moderate our interactions, and relations, with each other.

Note that when I say 'law' I mean something other than than the rules set by a particular jurisdiction, I mean: how do we come to establish these things, what are they based on, what justifies them, can they be consistent, what is it they enable, etc, etc ... that is, I speak as a legal and political scholar.

best ... khay

khayyam
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Posts: 6227
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 1:24 am Post subject:

Rad wrote:

khayyam wrote:

So you really think groups of people -technical communities, Linux distributions, nations- should have to submit to their qualified social scientists to make their written rules for them?

Rad ... that's not really implicit in what I said, however, if I wanted to know how to program in perl then I would seek the advice of people qualified to provide that advice. That programmers (or indeed, anyone) have some inherent knowledge about such things is all that was meant by "qualified", and if we take the social sciences to have some validity (which I do), then I'm sure there is expertise there that we could quantify as "qualified".

Rad wrote:

I personally don't - no matter how many authors they can quote that are in agreement with each other. It might be a little different if you could provide scientific proof that their stance is correct; that inevitably and necessarily a thing "x" happening will result in "y" happening, under exact circumstances a,b,c. (And in this context, that this leads to contradiction or obvious problem in the Gentoo policy somehow?). But I kind-of doubt you'll be the first to actually legitimize many of the social sciences that way.

Are you expecting the same level of 'proof' as say might be provided in mathematics? Not even physicists use this criteria for something 'happening', they are probabilistic, and not determinate. I would agree that a consistent and rational explanation, or model, based on scientific principles is needed ... but you seem to think that the social sciences are devoid of such things ... that's simply not true.

Now, using the "no matter how many authors" argument doesn't sway me one bit, though had you read these authors and provided a good argument to dismiss their arguments of "the dangers of monarchy, or oligarchy" I would be all ears.

Rad wrote:

Either way, maybe you have some improvements to the Gentoo rules that you think you can recommend, but I think there are better places for these specifics, no?

Your saying its not relevant, or necessary, for such discussions to happen here? Well, given this forum is on gentoo then it would seem just as good a place as any to discuss it.

Rad wrote:

Also, it at least seems to me that yngwin and the actually quite many other developers that apparently care about this issue are doing a quite a bit extra on top of what the policy requires (to figure out what we want and how to best solve this issue and stuff).

You mean the issue of ffmpeg/libav? Not to say that they are not, but we didn't arrive here by magic, these issues have causal relations to what went before ... and that's somewhat how we came to the discussion ... besides statements made by developers that on what "gentoo is".

best ... khay

John R. Graham
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Joined: 08 Mar 2005
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Location: Somewhere over Atlanta, Georgia

Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 4:22 am Post subject:

khayyam wrote:

John ... I think I got the point of your questions ... but would you say in absence of such a rule, or if such a rule was contradicted in some way, that this would validate something "detrimental"?

It must be my lucky day: I ask a question and I get a question in return.

My answer to your question is, perhaps yes, in that I think that the absence of such a rule could validate something detrimental to the community as a whole. At least, I would not rule out it happening under any circumstance.

khayyam wrote:

I don't think I was arguing that. First I set the trial conditions:

If I ... obey all of the laws of the landand then I ask a question:

... must I be further constrained in every action to, "...work with the benefit of the community in mind..."?In my analogy, I'm not further constraining myself, I'm asking if you believe I must be further constrained to be a good person. (Perhaps beyond simple courtesy.) For example, if I decide to go snowboarding or fly my plane, these are activities that are important to me but do not benefit my community.

khayyam wrote:

... but if the former, then I don't see what's particularly wrong in this regard, she's just taking on a limited workload, with perhaps a limited relation to what the community is interested in, but from the description given there doesn't seem to be harm involved (and that is the basic premise of such a law, or judgement).

I was asking for your subjective opinion. In fact, I think we agree. "Do no harm" seems like a really good starting point.

khayyam wrote:

I didn't say "more important" I said "care needs to be taken here to deal with the principles involved", because what are such rules based on? ...

Okay, I see; I think I misconstrued a little bit of what you said. I do think it could be construed as a little bit "cart before the horse" if we still haven't located the rules the developers are required to operate under.

- John
_________________
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Last edited by John R. Graham on Sun Feb 15, 2015 5:08 am; edited 1 time in total

steveL
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 10:33 am Post subject:

John R. Graham wrote:

I think that the absence of such a rule could validate something detrimental to the community as a whole. At least, I would not rule out it happening under any circumstance.

Well someone might use it as an argument as to why their borkage of the tree is no-one else's business ("after all, it's not written down that we have to make useful software",) but I think it's one of those things people see as so stonkingly obvious that they do not see the need to stipulate it.

At some point I guess you do need to though; after all Doctors have Paracelsus' "First Do No Harm," as well as the Hippocratic Oath; lawyers have a Professional obligation to work for their client's best interests.

Nothing stops someone actually breaking those rules, beyond convention; there is no mechanism in place to ensure it happens ahead of time; only conditioning hopefully based on conscious belief in them.

I agree with khay; "developers" who make a big deal about how their Council is purely about technical matters, and pride themselves that they elect people on the basis of technical merit, should not also turn around and pretend at a later date that they or their Council have a fscking clue about social matters. That's not what they're there for.

That's why the Community mandated the Proctors in the Code of Conduct. As such, the current CoC has no mandate whatsoever in Community terms; it is purely a developer invention.

On the wider point, perhaps programmers should have an ethical code. But really consider it this way: would you expect plumbers, for example, to get together and claim that coming round and cutting all your pipes, so your house is flooded, is a good thing?

Do we really need to stipulate that getting the job done, is a fundamental requirement for every profession? This point rests at the interface between a profession and the external community; and no judge is going to accept that crap as an excuse. "Oh I see, Mr Jones. You ripped out Mrs Smith's radiators because nowhere was it written down that you had to make her heating work, the job you were hired for."

The real shame about it all, is that the social side is actually the best part of FLOSS. I personally feel sorry for "developers" who have such a fscked-up attitude towards others, most especially their users. Nonetheless I don't want them working on our systems, any more than I want Mr Jones as a plumber. They can always apprentice and learn the craft, just like everyone else.

"It's about the results, stupid"

Hard-mask libav, and let's move on.

ff11
l33t
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:06 am Post subject:

steveL wrote:

John R. Graham wrote:

I think that the absence of such a rule could validate something detrimental to the community as a whole. At least, I would not rule out it happening under any circumstance.

I agree with you, but the devs here want pay a "new radiator" for Mrs Smith, pay for the job of Mr Jones from they own pocket (even agreeing that it was wrong). They want to support that insanity, getting the burn they-self, to every one be happy. And I can't say no for it, just desire good luck, that they will need.

krinn
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Joined: 02 May 2003
Posts: 7470

Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:37 am Post subject:

John R. Graham wrote:

John you don't have to violate any rule: taking the libav trouble.
We could assume the gentoo dev's work on libav inside Gentoo was made with the spirit of giving the best for our community. But without first clue (the community is not aware if the result of having default set to libav would be better or not at that time without testing), default was set to libav.

So no rules violation, but now we clearly see ffmpeg "seems" a better default for the community (this is the current result of this poll).
So even a dev has done this with good will at first, it is as now seen as a bad path taken (not a mistake, it wasn't a mistake to do the test, just proof the test didn't gave expect result).

As luca is a gentoo dev and libav dev, we could ask luca to change libav to drop name collision to improve anyone (and this, not only gentoo, but any linux distro will have choice to have both install). But it doesn't mean Luca will be force to do anything, libav is his baby not Gentoo's baby, as such he could do what he want, but because of his Gentoo dev hat, i won't be stock if we ask him ; and to some extend any libav devs shouldn't be shock any distribution is asking them changes (just like debian ask openrc change).
If libav devs think what we ask isn't good for their project, they don't have to do any change at all.

But for the libav integration in Gentoo as of today, i think the community has gave a clear answer.

khayyam
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:50 am Post subject:

John R. Graham wrote:

khayyam wrote:

John ... I think I got the point of your questions ... but would you say in absence of such a rule, or if such a rule was contradicted in some way, that this would validate something "detrimental"?

It must be my lucky day: I ask a question and I get a question in return. ;) My answer to your question is, perhaps yes, in that I think that the absence of such a rule could validate something detrimental to the community as a whole. At least, I would not rule out it happening under any circumstance.

John ... I wasn't trying to avoid your question merely re-framing it, as mitigating against 'harm', or 'detriment' is the central reason such rules exist. Overlooking for a second your 'perhaps', I would say that by answering yes you have abandoned the reason for such rules as the very premise of "acting together for common/mutual benefit" forecloses 'detriment'. Such rules need to be consistent otherwise we have no reason for stipulating them.

John R. Graham wrote:

khayyam wrote:

I don't think I was arguing that. First I set the trial conditions:

If I ... obey all of the laws of the landand then I ask a question:

Oh, ok, that wasn't altogether clear. My answer is quite simple, the rules applied wrt your "laws of the land" are the same as those of "working with the benefit of the community in mind", that is their raison d'etre. Now, as for your personal predilection for snowboarding, or in short doing as you please, the law should have no business with such things ... unless harm is involved. There is no constraint in you pursuing your interests, pleasures, etc ... only in those things which can be shown to have a deleterious effect on the community of which you are part. If there were such constraint then this in itself would be a deleterious effect on the community because your personal liberty (and that of others) is inherent in "benefit of the community". In short, such law should not be framed as a conflict between the wants of an individual and the needs of a community, the later is a reflection of the former (so "acting together for common/mutual benefit").

John R. Graham wrote:

khayyam wrote:

I didn't say "more important" I said "care needs to be taken here to deal with the principles involved", because what are such rules based on? ...

We don't need to locate such rules, they are implicit in "acting together for common/mutual benefit".

best ... khay

steveL
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 1:34 pm Post subject:

(As an aside, there's no need to quote the entirety of someone's post to respond to it; it just wastes screen space.)

ff11 wrote:

Well that's what they always say ahead of time, then when it comes to the crunch, it's all hand-waving about "progress" and "innovation" and what they see as trendy in buzzword-terms this month. And out goes the commitment they gave earlier, and now it's all talk of "best practices" (which really does take the biscuit, given the concomitant wilful refusal to even acknowledge existing best practices, on display in many cases), and how "Linux isn't about choice" any more, even though that's exactly what it is about, and always has been.

Along with the horse-sh1t about "we're the ones doing the work" when to anyone external it looks more like "we're the ones breaking the pieces, and expecting you to do the QA to put them back together. Be nice to us about it, or we'll sulk."

Note that none of this is about lu_zero; he doesn't behave anything at all like this. He should, however, have seen ahead of time, that one lib taking over the namespace of another is neither desirable in general terms, nor trivial in specific. The package should have been masked-for-testing as experimental, which is precisely how Gentoo can be so useful for software-development; you can bring in new stuff and test it with willing users, all without breaking anyone else's setup.

In more general terms, I am at a loss as to why so many of Gentoo's own developers seem unaware of that as a modus-operandi alongside experimental overlays; instead seemingly preferring to unleash experimental-at-best "solutions" such as multilib, or the latest openrc "brainwave", on to the userbase for "wider-testing" without even so much as a by-your-leave, nor even testing with any sort of process beyond a vcs commit.

"unstable" is supposed to be about the upstream codebase at hand, not about the distro itself. If you are working on base system packages or libraries, you have a duty to be more rigorous in your approach. It's not like there are no examples of how to do it right; toolchain, hardened and haskell herds spring to immediate mind, as do eudev, ZFS-on-linux and embedded, all projects nurtured within Gentoo, working for the base system without much fanfare; often none at all.

If you don't like being held up to a standard; tough. Get over it: that's how programming works; and so does wider development.
Surely you didn't come into this to do a bad job? If not, then please welcome that we expect you to do your best, just like we do, to help Gentoo.

yngwin
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Posts: 4572
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 3:05 pm Post subject:

John R. Graham wrote:

Which leads me to a few serious questions for yngwin in particular and perhaps other Gentoo Developers in general:

Do you believe that Gentoo prides itself on being a community driven distribution that acts with the best interest of the community at heart?

I would say the evidence points to Gentoo being developer-driven, with a lot of freedom for developers to do what they want. The wider community has only limited input into the development process. Getting Gentoo developers to do something is often likened to herding cats...

John R. Graham wrote:

Do you believe that Gentoo Developers are required to act with the best interest of the community at heart?

I don't see that requirement codified anywhere. I do think most developers would see it as an unwritten, professional pride issue, that is important, but it is not necessarily the measure by which decisions are judged.

John R. Graham wrote:

If so, by what rules, stated where? (For example, is the Code of Conduct operative in the non-communications arena of Developer behavior?)

The CoC is about communications, not the technical side of distro development and maintenance. GLEP39 is the basis of how Gentoo development works.

John R. Graham wrote:

If not, do you think they should be?

I feel I have a vested interest in the answers to those questions, as I suspect do a lot of people who are participating here.

Maybe. It is a nice ideal. But the question becomes: how do we judge what is in the best interest of the community? And how do we get volunteers to do what we want them to do?
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ff11
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 3:12 pm Post subject:

steveL wrote:

If you don't like being held up to a standard; tough. Get over it: that's how programming works; and so does wider development.
Surely you didn't come into this to do a bad job? If not, then please welcome that we expect you to do your best, just like we do, to help Gentoo.

I do welcome this. My own concern is about the harm thing. It has not happened here yet (I hope). But when it happened in another project, as libav, in favor of support possibilities and choices, the attitude seems to be supported. So even if it is redundant with the "common sense", I would like a rule that tried to prevent attitudes that hurt the community.

steveL
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 3:56 pm Post subject:

John R. Graham wrote:

If so, by what rules, stated where? (For example, is the Code of Conduct operative in the non-communications arena of Developer behavior?)

yngwin wrote:

The CoC is about communications, not the technical side of distro development and maintenance. GLEP39 is the basis of how Gentoo development works.

John R. Graham wrote:

If not, do you think they should be?

I feel I have a vested interest in the answers to those questions, as I suspect do a lot of people who are participating here.[/list]

Maybe. It is a nice ideal. But the question becomes: how do we judge what is in the best interest of the community? And how do we get volunteers to do what we want them to do?

Down that road lies coercion dressed-up as politesse, typified by the corporate-bureau-speek prevalent in many commercial, and not-so-commercially minded, but commercially-used, distros.

What khayyam said:

khayyam wrote:

We don't need to locate such rules, they are implicit in "acting together for common/mutual benefit".

The whole point being that people volunteer because they have some itch they want to scratch, and here's the clincher: they need to collaborate with others in order to achieve their objective; even if community engagement does not appeal to them, and they are just a selfish s-o-b.

So the price for collaborating with others, is that you both adhere to certain boundaries of behaviour, and that you at least consider the interests of the group, before proceeding. That is how a community of people who do care about each other, ensure that selfish egoists don't spoil the party for everyone, while having the freedom to pursue your own interests; as ever, the boundaries are decided on the basis of potential harm to that community, whatever anyone thinks of that, or however "individual" they like to think they are.

I simply cannot get my head around proceeding to break everyone else's setup, when there are SO many mechanisms in place to give you a safety-net -- to avoid exactly that circumstance.
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steveL
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 4:03 pm Post subject:

steveL wrote:

ff11 wrote:

Well I'm just not sure how you "legislate" for that, for want of a better word.

Certainly it seems like it should be stipulated that the Gentoo distro is here to serve its users. I thought that was pretty much what drobbins' initial mission-statement was about, as well as all that stuff up about "top-notch configurability."

Though, again, I can't help feeling that if you don't think that already, then you have no place being a distro developer, nor indeed a developer of any sort. By all means enjoy your work; but if someone doesn't already realise that software development is about meeting user-goals, then I have no clue how to get through to them. In that scenario, I'd think they were retarded, in some fashion or another.

(I don't mean that as an insult, as some people appear to use it nowadays; that's not how I learnt English.)

khayyam
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 4:23 pm Post subject:

yngwin wrote:

John R. Graham wrote:

Do you believe that Gentoo prides itself on being a community driven distribution that acts with the best interest of the community at heart?

yngwin ... which, besides the vagueness involved in the question/statement provided, can be surmised as "gentoo is the developers playground", and that the community of users supporting it (via 'work') doesn't warrant the distinction: 'input'. So, let us abandon the pretence of 'community' and explicitly state the nature of this political system, so that the 'community' can be in no doubt as to its nature, and so that we can see it for what it in fact is.

yngwin wrote:

John R. Graham wrote:

Do you believe that Gentoo Developers are required to act with the best interest of the community at heart?

Yes, because you refuse to see them as being implicit in "acting together for common/mutual benefit" ... if I hadn't made this point on a number of occasions I could perhaps overlook that, but you seem dead set on asserting the right to "do what you (and other developers) want".

yngwin wrote:

John R. Graham wrote:

If so, by what rules, stated where? (For example, is the Code of Conduct operative in the non-communications arena of Developer behavior?)

The CoC is about communications, not the technical side of distro development and maintenance. GLEP39 is the basis of how Gentoo development works.

Yes, and as I said, I don't expect programmers to be particularly adept at providing answers to questions that are those of the social sciences. I, however, am qualified, I have a PhD on the subject, a book (on this *very* question), various papers in academic journals, and I've been studying it for over 30 years. Now, if I were to provide you with an atrocious ebuild would you then say I was qualified to act as a developer, quite obviously no, the same is true of other specialised areas of knowledge ... regardless of what the rules say, or how you imagine it to "work".

yngwin wrote:

John R. Graham wrote:

[*]If not, do you think they should be?[/list]I feel I have a vested interest in the answers to those questions, as I suspect do a lot of people who are participating here.

Maybe. It is a nice ideal. But the question becomes: how do we judge what is in the best interest of the community? And how do we get volunteers to do what we want them to do?

It's not an ideal, its a working model, you have a choice: monarchy (the one), oligarchy (the few) or democracy (the many) ... the generally accepted wisdom on the matter is that democracy is most preferable as there are more checks and balances to power. However difficult this may be in practice doesn't matter because the dangers inherent in the others two choices far outweighs the negatives involved in the third. Besides, it is already "a democracy", that, again, is inherent in "acting together for common/mutual benefit".

best ... khay

ff11
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 4:24 pm Post subject:

steveL wrote:

Though, again, I can't help feeling that if you don't think that already, then you have no place being a distro developer, nor indeed a developer of any sort. By all means enjoy your work; but if someone doesn't already realise that software development is about meeting user-goals, then I have no clue how to get through to them. In that scenario, I'd think they were retarded, in some fashion or another.

(I don't mean that as an insult, as some people appear to use it nowadays; that's not how I learnt English.)

Sure. But to be an ordinary citizen, is completely illogical someone go out killing others of the same city, but we have rules that punish murderers, because there are people who do not act according to the "common sense".
We can pretend that it not exist on opensource software development, but we have things like libav old namespaces for new API/ABI, and the kernel sabotage of Reiser4 ( http://linuxhelp.150m.com/jews/saboteurs.htm ) to prove otherwise. Not everybody will go with the "common sense".

steveL
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 11:36 am Post subject:

ff11 wrote:

Hmm what's with the "jews" in that URL? This is pure crap for a start; as if politicians don't wear whatever head-garb is appropriate for the temple at hand.

Anti-semitism is just racialism, afaic. As well blame every Christian for all the shit Christendom has inflicted upon the world.

As to your wider point, I agree that Gentoo needs something more explicit to stop lunatics taking over the asylum. I just very much doubt any of the people who actually need to think about this, in relation to how they behave, are going to go along with it.

ff11
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 1:30 pm Post subject:

steveL wrote:

As to your wider point, I agree that Gentoo needs something more explicit to stop lunatics taking over the asylum. I just very much doubt any of the people who actually need to think about this, in relation to how they behave, are going to go along with it.

Well then the point is made, and you can ignore the other part that is only for enforce the point.

khayyam
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 1:43 pm Post subject:

steveL wrote:

steve ... as I alluded to above there are outcomes, causal effects, etc, that come with the mode of governance. So, when, like yngwin above, we ask "how", we also need to ask "what happens if we don't", and/or "what are the causes of {x}". We can argue that the problem of getting "the community" to work in concert is something like "herding cats" but this is to overlook the outcomes that can, and will, come as part of our avoiding these difficulties. All non-democratic, and authoritarian, regimes point to the weakness of "the many" to act as a coherent whole (a standard nationalist trope) but the problem is equally apparent where coercion and control is the preferred method (policing, and control of opinion, is far more resource intensive). These political systems are also a lot less stable, because: power being located in one, or few, hands makes it easier to seize/manipulate (and so encourages political instability); causes people to feel disenfranchised (and so have less invested in, and willingness toward, co-operation ... why should they, its not really for their benefit); undermines the very thing that each of the parties can gain from their co-operating, and the primary mechanism that facilitates them wanting to maintain that co-operation (ie, it meliorates against not finding agreement, solutions, etc).

Politics is no different from other dynamic systems ... and the same models used for physical systems (cause and effect, entropy, etc) are equally as apparent.

It should be self-evident that the problems we encounter as a community can all be attributable to, or understood as reflections of, this community ... that is, there is a causal relation ... but this community is only as much as its governance model accounts for, allows, inculcates, etc, which is what makes the "developers do what they want", or "show us the code" so problematic, it casts the entire nature of the problem as inherent to the model, re-shapes the term 'community', and highlights that these problems are at heart political.

best ... khay

steveL
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 8:47 pm Post subject:

steveL wrote:

ff11 wrote:

Well then the point is made, and you can ignore the other part that is only for enforce the point.

I could in theory ignore it, but morally I cannot, any more than I could ignore it if "jews" were replaced by "darkies", "homos" or "spastics".

I was hoping you would tell me that was nothing to do with you, and you hadn't realised (or some such.) Instead you come across as condoning anti-semitism. While it may be understandable given the Naqba and the consequent forced-removals, collective punishment, ghettoisation, and effective concentration-camp made out of Greater Palestine; to do so is a grave mistake.

Zionism != Judaism, just as the US "Republican" Party/House Bush != Christianity, and Wahaabi/House Saud != Islam.

steveL
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 9:24 pm Post subject:

khayyam wrote:

as I alluded to above there are outcomes, causal effects, etc, that come with the mode of governance. So, when, like yngwin above, we ask "how", we also need to ask "what happens if we don't", and/or "what are the causes of {x}". We can argue that the problem of getting "the community" to work in concert is something like "herding cats" but this is to overlook the outcomes that can, and will, come as part of our avoiding these difficulties.

Agreed; although i feel I have to point out that more often, the method of avoiding difficulties, is to shunt the discussion into a less-popular thread so that the points aren't aired widely any more. You end up with a thread with the usual suspects talking amongst themselves, and the "developers" quietly drop out.

This is very similar to the corporate move of "setting up a sub-committee" of people who raised the topic in a more general board meeting, because it speaks to the very core of what that board is doing. That's also why it's avoided; since it is well-known that things are broken, and precisely how. The latter point would be crucial in a real-life scenario.

There just isn't any will to change anything, because the people who have authority to do so, are well-served by the status-quo.

So occasionally you'll hear from some "well-meaning" soul who cannot argue with whichever analysis, wondering what can be done. OFC they entirely miss the point that what needs to be done, is a display of leadership. If something broken is pointed out to you, and you cannot but agree with the analysis, move ahead and correct the issue.

Or get off the pot and let someone else correct it, as you do not belong in any sort of leadership position. That bit no-one wants to concede, though they're usually good at musing on the nature of leadership (or more accurately, w/e is on their brain.)

Personally the older I get, the happier I am to support someone else's work instead of having to handle it myself, which I am usually not suited for in any case. I think the difference is that I know I'd be unhappy trying to do work I'm not good at, and that's more relevant to me than any sort of status.

Quote:

All non-democratic, and authoritarian, regimes point to the weakness of "the many" to act as a coherent whole (a standard nationalist trope) but the problem is equally apparent where coercion and control is the preferred method (policing, and control of opinion, is far more resource intensive).

The problem is also more of "unwillingness to act how I/we want them to act", ie about control rather than outcome. There are a lot of sick puppies in positions of power, scions of families inbred over centuries, bloodlines usually established by a psychopath and consolidated by sociopaths, who celebrate the odd throwback psycho as "one of the boys".

They tend to be more interested in control, and keeping track of where they are in "the game", than harmony, which doesn't mean anything to them beyond not so many fun things happening; usually violence or people forced to the edge acting out in some other fashion.

Quote:

These political systems are also a lot less stable, because: power being located in one, or few, hands makes it easier to seize/manipulate (and so encourages political instability); causes people to feel disenfranchised (and so have less invested in, and willingness toward, co-operation ... why should they, its not really for their benefit); undermines the very thing that each of the parties can gain from their co-operating, and the primary mechanism that facilitates them wanting to maintain that co-operation (ie, it meliorates against not finding agreement, solutions, etc).

Yes, that's just "divide and conquer". Live your life ever more atomised, cut off from the natural state of community, and never even able to articulate what it is that's missing, since you're brain-washed from birth via corporate media that effects the Nazi trope of sex and violence being the same thing (so "sex-n-violence" have been discussed in the same sentence for over 30 years, where they never were before), and drips poison ("blame the immigrants", etc) into the background of every cozy domestic situation.

Much easier to bribe, corrupt or otherwise suborn a few "elected representatives" than it is to fool all of the people, all of the time.

Quote:

Politics is no different from other dynamic systems ... and the same models used for physical systems (cause and effect, entropy, etc) are equally as apparent.

Well people are very different to molecules; far more uncertainty involved. Causes and effects are obfuscated, and when simple obvious ones are pointed out, as with your arguments with the legal establishment, it's just dismissed as oddball, or "radical" when you want to imply vague threat (FUD) to anyone who doesn't toe the kleptocratic (or hegemonic) line.

Quote:

It should be self-evident that the problems we encounter as a community can all be attributable to, or understood as reflections of, this community ... that is, there is a causal relation ... but this community is only as much as its governance model accounts for, allows, inculcates, etc, which is what makes the "developers do what they want", or "show us the code" so problematic, it casts the entire nature of the problem as inherent to the model, re-shapes the term 'community', and highlights that these problems are at heart political.

Yeah trouble is the old one of sheeple who think they're "apolitical" not realising that simply means they effectively give up all claim to a voice. The problem in Gentoo developer land is they're under the delusion that by being completely ignorant of politics, they are somehow better at "technical" things. The concomitant non-sequitur is that they can collectively deal with socio-political matters, despite having trumpeted how they only consider people's technical ability as a qualification for "merit".

The first is completely mistaken, since your technik operates in a human monde, as it has to meet user-goals, whatever your personal inclinations are toward dealing with end-users. It's no good doing the bestest piece of software evah, if no-one ever uses it; and more often than not the reasons for it not being used are political, social or commercial, not technical.

That's one of the appeals of FLOSS: that the work is, or can be, pursued for the craft of it. Amateur-hour politicking simply threatens the very thing the "we're not political, but here's all these rules that mean we're in charge" brigade claim to want to protect: the ability to pursue technical perfection.

Ofc the grown-ups let the kids think w/e craziness they like when they're at the age where they play in a playpen, sandbox, or w/e you want to call the portage-tree in your ickle head. There there. ;)

ff11
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 10:04 pm Post subject:

steveL wrote:

I was hoping you would tell me that was nothing to do with you, and you hadn't realised (or some such.)

Ok! That was nothing to do with me.
I just saw the code at the time, I was sabotaged, but I don't write any articles about it, so now I only looked for someone who wrote something about what I went through myself, being sabotaged and losing files because of it. If you can read codes, then you can replace the link with: version 2.6.20 - 2.6.21 from git.kernel.org the Reiser4 commit (it's pretty clear that it was sabotage).

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