On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 12:49 PM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek <zbyszek@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Oh, it's not about knowledge at all in this case, but about bias and > objectivity. Obviously, people who design some change can never be > fully neutral. Additionally, if we assume that FESCo members vote for > their changes, those changes would effectively have a lower bar than > other changes, since a +1 (or more if more members are involved) would > always be guaranteed. I don't like this appearance of unfairness. In ethics, these are sometimes difficult and nuanced. But I don't think this is such a situation. Bias is not the same thing as a conflict of interest. And it doesn't inherently result in unfairness. Does the approval or rejection of a feature result in a personal benefit to a voting member? What is a personal benefit? Learning some new skill might seem to be a personal benefit, but that's something that could apply to anyone in a similar position, and thus not a conflict of interest. A personal benefit that is a conflict of interest might be a promotion or increase in salary, as a result of additional work (which could happen either by feature approval or rejection depending on the nature of the conflict). More subtle conflicts arise if any voting member does performance evaluation of someone submitting a feature. Bias that's either obvious or clearly stated is not likely to be a conflict of interest. The more obvious the bias, the more straightforward the challenge can be, if one exists. And objective and professional application of expertise is a good basis for bias, and is not a compelling reason for recusal. In the case of a true conflict of interest, it is a recusal that is more likely called for, not merely abstaining on the vote. A real conflict of interest means even persuading others can itself produce the personal benefit, even if that person abstains from the vote. I think the abstained vote case is generally about a lack of subject matter interest or expertise. Something about the presentation of the feature is insufficiently compelling or convincing, but not disqualifying. If the feature seems like a good idea, but could be specious, then the proper thing to do is vote against it on the basis that liabilities haven't been satisfactorily explored. Or similar specific critique. -- Chris Murphy _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
