As requested ... There has been some debate on -dev, and in private IRC conversations, as to whether the "Etiquette Policy" is a) a policy b) an official policy, or c) just guidelines There has also been some debate, in the same mediums, as to whether or not the devrel group has the authority on its own to write and publish a binding Etiquette Policy for the whole of Gentoo. That issue has not yet been resolved. At the moment, despite this debate, this section remains published on the website. I'm suggesting that one of three things needs to happen. a) WIthdraw the section for now, sort out the authorisation issue, and then bring it back b) Change the wording, to make it clear that it is not official Gentoo policy c) Put out a statement confirming that it is policy The current situation doesn't really help anyone. Personally, I'd recommend a). There's nothing wrong with it being an official policy, but I think the way it was introduced has undermined it, and withdrawing it until devrel's scope has been somehow officially sanctioned would do a lot to improve goodwill. Best regards, Stu
"General development management, developer relations" was listed as devrel's description at the time of its creation, according to http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/metastructure/oldprojects.xml. I would argue that the first clause of that gives devrel quite a bit of policy-setting ability.
There has been separate public emails from Jon and Kurt on the subject. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/19758 (Kurt) http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/19760 (Jon) I'm not saying that devrel should or should not have the ability to make policy or not, or what the scope of that policy is. I've filed a bug because I believe the current situation needs clarifying (and it's not for devrel to provide that clarification I think), and until it is clarified, it might be better for the currently published document to be amended or withdrawn. Best regards, Stu
Whether devrel is allowed to set policy or not is really a secondary issue. The fact is that the way the handbook was introduced (for right or wrong) left a sour taste in the mouth of a number of folks. IMO, we should acknowledge that and focus our efforts on fixing the sour taste, rather than arguing about what devrel may or may not do. Personally, I believe devrel has the authority to *publish* a binding etiquette guide, but I think the development team as a whole should have a large hand in creating the etiquette guide. Picking on a fairly benign example in the handbook, maybe the majority of devs don't really care if we write 'alsa' instead of 'ALSA'. If that's the case, we should rip that part out of the guide.
#include <stdStuff/This is not a rant.h> #include <stdStuff/Sorry for this being one of these long comments again.h> As I see it it's more of a: "<guidelines>You should try and ...</guidelines> but if you do a major misconduct then <policy>Developer Relations will take sanctions</policy>" thing. For me, most of the page is already just guidelines but if a developer say, starts publicly cursing GNU Frozbinate and kicking people in #gentoo-dev then I think it's <policy/> for us to take action against that. By this statement which I just said, I'm not saying people can't curse GNU Frozbinate. We aren't and we don't want to be the Thought Police or the Ministry of Truth - that's doubleplusbad for everybody including Gentoo as a distribution. For example: Wrong and trollish :: "GNU Frozbinate is the worst thing ever written. It's *so* slow; it's slower than GNU Emacs - which takes 1x10^\inf years to start up." --- IMO, not being a troll :: "GNU Frozbinate is really bad!!! It crashes on my file and the code is full of security bugs and overflows! I've told the author about this and he didn't even respond to my suggestions!" Not wrong :: "GNU Frozbinate is slower than Emacs sometimes at doing its job; it should be removed or replaced by GNU Frozbify which I think does a much better job." Perfect :: "GNU Frozbinate isn't the best thing I know of - it's horrendously slow and parsing takes 20 times longer on tests I've performed {link} than say, GNU Frozbify. GNU Frozbify has more --features and also has more detailed documentation." Now, everybody gets into rants and we all know that and it happens to everybody at some time. It's just that if developer X gets into rants every day, antagonizes both users and developers and sometimes is just rude, then Developer Relations would start *investigating* and getting evidence since by then we'd have probably received multiple complaints... Sooner or later, Developer X might cause people to stay away from Team Y on which Developer X is a member. We don't want that, neither do our users or other developers and that's what this etiquette document (does|tries to|should) spell out - it won't stop Developer X from ranting every day, nor will it solve his aggression. It just points out that to every action there is a consequence. If the action is serious enough, so is the consequence. Sidenote: In the end the action is usually caused by users or developers getting hurt. AFAIK we've never taken direct sanctions against somebody for bad behaviour and it is very unlikely that we ever will. We took action before for professional misconduct against our users which was inevitable due to bad behaviour and constant steaming. > Change the wording I would and I'm sure the rest of us here would be *more* than pleased to discuss this - for example, Kurt pointed out his dislikes for certain sections, we discussed his points and the page got changed as a result. Just tell us what you don't agree with and hopefully we can get this improved for everybody. As Kurt's just commented, we should argue less about whether this is a policy or not a policy - since that won't make the document any less sour and less deadly even if it's a set of "guidelines". Hope that helps to explain what I think the etiquette guide should do... Again, sorry if this is horribly long.
I see no reason for this to be private. It's not about a specific person.
Ok, considering that we have this paragraph on it now: <quote> That doesn't mean that we expect you to follow this guide to the bullet point; nor do we expect you even agree with it - we do expect, however that all developers maintain reasonable standards of behaviour with our community - whether to other developers or users. However, you may be subject to sanctions or a suspension if a resonable standard is not met. </quote> ... I think there is enough clarification as to the extent of the document - namely that it specifies what we /expect/ developers to follow, if not exactly then fairly closely, and that if a developer goes out to the extreme (examples given in comment #4), sanctions will be taken. If you think this still needs clarification, then feel free to reopen the bug but please provide examples as to how you would like it clarified. Thanks!
