Re: Debian Cloud Team delegation updates
On 6/4/20 12:54 AM, Noah Meyerhans wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 12:42:47AM +0200, Thomas Goirand wrote:
>>> IMHO, this requirement makes more difficult to find as someone from the
>>> people, as AFAIK many of us are working in a way for a cloud provider,
>>> or a partner.
>>>
>>> What are we actually afraid of here ? As far as the build process of the
>>> images is in the open.
>>
>> We're afraid of conflict of interest. There's been multiple times where
>> we saw it could happen, and by having the delegates not involved with a
>> provider, we're hoping to reduce that risk.
>
> Can you cite a specific example? I cannot think of one.
It's been tempting on nearly every meeting that the team bypasses the
Debian policy, and customizes the images with software backported from
testing, and still call that Debian stable. It took a lot of explanation
from Steve at the time, to explain that this isn't what Debian is.
Non-free cloud providers had (and to some extend, still have) a hard
time understanding why we wouldn't simply push the very latest version
of their tooling to Stable, or to our image.
Also, we want to make sure that we aren't giving a commercial advantage
to a specific cloud provider. However, we're already doing this, by
having a system which uploads our images directly to the 3 biggest
providers, while the others have to manage it by themselves, and we
still have no solution (yet) for OpenStack based providers. Hopefully
that will be fixed when the image-finder gets useful, and we can build a
script to automatically upload what's published, but we're not there yet.
As per the delegation text:
"the Delegates will:
- Advocate for the adoption and advancement of Free Software cloud
computing platforms and tools."
How can the delegates push for more free software cloud computing
platforms (and therefore, push for less non-free implementations like
AWS, Azure, or GCE) if they are bound to an employer non-free cloud as
primary business? This is a direct conflict of interest.
> If *all* delegates were affiliated with a single cloud provider or other
> similar entity, then I'd be more inclined to share your concern. As it
> is, I think calling out that our restrictions on the delegations are
> unusual in the broader context of DPL delegations is an interesting
> point, and we should consider the possibility that we're excluding
> people who might otherwise be well suited to this role.
I've been the only person officially standing for an implementation of
cloud computing which is free-software. As an alternative for cloud
computing with completely closed software. And in all of the meetings.
In these meetings, I was happy that a few times, that we had Lucas and
Steve steering the discussion on the correct path. They built solid
foundations for establishing rules of what we allow to be called an
"official Debian image". Without them (and with only me vouching for
these ideas), it wouldn't be that clear in everyone minds. Probably we'd
be publishing "official images" with lots of packages coming from
backports, for example.
If then we get all of the delegates being affiliated with a commercial
clouds (even if it was 3 different providers), I would feel less
comfortable. There's the danger that the team gets even more tempted to
break these rules, because it'd be "more convenient" for example.
> Practically speaking, the cloud team delegates have little real power
> and very few actual responsibilities. The possibility of abuse is
> minimal. Transparency in our decision making processes should be more
> than sufficient to address any potential concerns.
>
>>> We have Debian Developpers working for Ubuntu, Redhat, Prodigy, Kali in
>>> the past and present, and it mostly goes fine.
>>
>> And? I don't see how this relates to the discussion.
>
> It relates directly. The very same conflicts of interest about which
> you express concern apply in these cases as well.
Mixing the role of a contributor with the one of a delegate isn't going
to help as a point of argumentation. A contributor isn't one that takes
decisions or speaks for the project. If you feel like the delegates
don't need to take any decision, or speak for the project, then we don't
need delegates at all.
Plus there's all what Lucas just replied in this thread that I'm not
going to repeat.
Cheers,
Thomas Goirand (zigo)
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