Project:Council

The elected Gentoo Council decides on global issues and policies that affect multiple projects in Gentoo. It also serves as an appeal court for disciplinary decisions. The Council members are elected for a year and must hold monthly public meetings. This form of management was created via GLEP 39.

Appeals process

The Council may, at its option, accept appeals on decisions by project leads. Only people who are directly affected by a decision can appeal. To appeal, send a request to the Council describing your perspective on what happened, any additional information or any disputes to the original information that you think should change the decision, and your justification for reversal of the action. The Council will then decide whether to accept your appeal, followed by discussion regarding the appeal. This discussion may be private at the Council's discretion. Because the Council's responsibility is to do what is best for all of Gentoo, it may also take into account any broader context surrounding this specific appeal in considering which decision will improve Gentoo. Following the Council's discussion and decision, the decision will be announced and the rationale made public. A Council decision is final.

Meetings

Meetings are held at least once a month in the #gentoo-council (webchat ) IRC channel on irc.libera.chat. The time and date of each meeting is decided by the active Council and is announced at least two weeks earlier through email to the gentoo-dev and gentoo-dev-announce mailing lists. The Council may hold more than one meeting per month if deemed necessary by its members.

The current Council holds its monthly meeting on the second Sunday of each month, at 16:00 UTC .

Prior to each meeting, anyone may propose items to be included to the meeting's agenda by replying to the original meeting announcement or by sending a new email to the gentoo-dev mailing list. For items to be considered for the meeting, they should be sent at least one week before the meeting date, otherwise they may be pushed back to a later meeting. Also, most, if not all items should be discussed by mail prior to submission. An item may be pushed back to a later meeting if further discussion is required.

One week before each meeting a draft of the agenda is sent to gentoo-dev and gentoo-dev-announce. Item proposals are still accepted afterwards, but their chance of actually getting in the current agenda is low. Items in the agenda are discussed and some may be filtered out.

In each meeting, Council members discuss and vote on items included in its agenda. They also go through open bugs with Council involvement.

Council chairs for the year-long term are selected from volunteers prior to the first meeting and rotate each month. The chair is responsible for sending the next meeting announcement and drafts of its agenda to the gentoo-dev and gentoo-dev-announce mailing lists for discussion prior to the meeting. They are also responsible for committing the meeting's log and summary after its completion.

Arch-status Reviews

The Council periodically reviews the activity of architecture-related activities, most notably but not exclusively the turnaround time of keywording/stabilisation requests. This takes place during June and December meetings, with additional sessions if required.

Meeting chairs

Meeting logs

Slacker marks

Rationale

To ensure that the Council stays active, the chosen metastructure model says that if a Council member (or their appointed proxy) fails to show up for two consecutive meetings, they are marked as a slacker.

If a Council member who has been marked a slacker misses any further meeting (or their appointed proxy doesn't show up), they lose their position and a new election is held to replace that person. The 'slacker' marker is reset when a member is elected.

If any meeting has less than 50% attendance by Council members, a new election for all places must be held within a month.

Current slacker status

none

Resources

Resources offered by the Council include:

• Current metastructure model
• Metastructure reform 2005
• Code of conduct — describes Gentoo's Code of Conduct for public communication fora, as well as the action taken should it be broken.
• AI policy
• Council meeting summary guidelines — the result of reading (and improving) way too many horrible old files; intended as recommended best practices, not as a binding policy.

Voting process

→ Gentoo Council elections

Open bugs with Council participation

→ Bugzilla search

• Gentoo Projects
• Council