Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [Tech-board-discuss] TAB non-nomination

Steven Rostedt
2018-11-09T00:29:50Z

On Thu, 08 Nov 2018 16:04:02 -0800
James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Several people have asked me to stand again for election to the TAB, so
> I thought I'd give a general explanation of why that isn't going to
> happen. For background: I was one of the people who lead the charge in
> getting the Linux Foundation predecessor OSDL to create the TAB to give
> developer input into what was then seen as a body trying to speak for
> the Linux Kernel. I was actually TAB chair for 8 years from 2006 to
> 2014. The job of the TAB, as I saw it, was to solve a lot of the
> political friction issues around the places where the Linux Kernel
> community interfaces with the Linux Foundation and Industry and in
> those 8 years I gained quite a lot of expertise in political relations
> trying to do that.
>
> However, TAB member and TAB chair aren't roles people are born to fill,
> they're roles people have to grow into. What our community needs is
> more people willing to grow into these roles to ensure effective
> succession and if I stepped into one I'd be denying others that
> opportunity, which would be bad both for succession planning and the
> growth of the community in general.
>
> I think the reason I'm getting these requests is angst over this CoC
> debate, so I'll go so far as to detail my political instincts over this
> below ... if you've no interest in politics (as most of you won't have)
> stop reading now. If you are interested, perhaps you should consider
> standing for the TAB yourself.

If I understand this correctly, this is your way of telling those that
asked you to run for TAB that you are not doing so.

>
> James
>
> ---
>
> The biggest political mistake was actually doing anything with the
> Linux Kernel CoC at all. The object was to deflect a highly
> unfavourable article in the New Yorker. With hind sight, that could be
> achieved simply by Linus' personal apology, statement that he was
> stepping aside and going for assistance to understand others' emotions.
>
> Hind sight, though is always perfect. At the time, as a TAB member,

Hind sight is actually far from perfect, because we really don't know
what would have happened if we did things differently.

-- Steve

> all you saw was a panic driven by both Linus and the Linux Foundation
> that we needed an updated Kernel CoC ASAP, like today. Panic is very
> infectious so it can be extremely difficult in these circumstances to
> stand up and say "stop, we need more information" ... and if you think
> you'd be the one always to demand more information remember that
> there's a time a decision has to be made and it always passes before
> you can get complete information, so you'd basically be rendering the
> TAB indecisive and useless. Recognising when it's time to stop and ask
> for more data and when you have to make decisions with what you have is
> a key political skill.
>
> The second mistake was picking the wrong CoC. I'm not talking about
> the wording, which has been discussed on this list, but the politics
> surrounding the choice: The original author of the current CoC was
> unsupportive to the point of attacking the kernel community in public.
> That drove a huge amount of me too attacks plus an equally large amount
> of anti-me too hysteria and lead to enormous external awareness and
> friction plus a not inconsiderable amount of unwelcome personal email
> to various people. This could largely have been avoided by either
> evolving our existing CoC through a community process or by picking a
> CoC whose original author would be willing to stand up and be
> supportive of our desire to change.
>
> The third mistake was dumping the fully formed CoC and a later update
> into the tree with little to no community input which has generated a
> lot of obvious anger within our community itself. All I'll say on this
> is that revisiting the CoC is going to cause another huge cascade of
> externally driven attacks which I think we'd all rather avoid, so if
> you're still ticked, then perhaps you should channel that anger and
> stand for the TAB ...
>
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