2017 Gentoo Council Manifesto of Mart Raudsepp (leio)
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Background
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I have been a Gentoo user since December 2002 and developer since August 2006,
when I was brought in to help out with wxGTK maintenance (of which I was an
upstream developer back then). I branched out to GNOME pretty soon and after
some developer departures became its project lead in 2009, even through my less
active periods due to not finding anyone else to agree to carry that title.

Professionally I've worked on a wide area of things, such as:
Firmware (Coreboot), graphics drivers (xf86-video-geode), Set-top box (teletext
and DVB subtitles support), GStreamer, digital signage, various website
projects, Odoo.

I have served on the Council in the past, from February 2009 to June 2010.


Current projects
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* Gentoo GNOME Desktop
* GStreamer package maintainers
* Gentoo/MIPS Port
* Gentoo/ARM64 cheerleader
* X11
* Gentoo wxWidgets Project
* Project Grumpy (TBA)


Council plans and vision
------------------------

I believe that members of the council should be very active in the distribution
as regular technical developers as well. This allows to be better versed in our
needs from personal experience, interact more with fellow developers to know
their technical problems in a wider distro level scale, etc.

I think that the council should serve as a leading body, not only reacting to
all the big and tiny issues with a monthly vote cast. While this can be its bare
minimum requirement, I don't think that we should be satisfied with just that
from the elected council members and should expect a leading positive example
for our peers from them, which would motivate others to step up as well.

So more exactly I would hope the council members to work together to:

* Proactively find areas of improvements to the Gentoo distribution.
* Try to find and empower the necessary manpower and other resources to make it
  happen.

This can take various forms, as seen fit. It could be just thinking themselves
what needs improvements, or together with fellow council members, or asking the
wider community, or asking existing Gentoo projects, etc.

So this is essentially what I hope the elected council members would do, not what
they must do as many of the other manifestos describe. Formally the council does
not have to do this, but I believe it would be best for the longevity of our
beloved distribution if the council is composed of members that informally do so.

If you agree with me, I hope for your vote and the vote towards my fellow candidates
with a can-do attitude.
Either way, should I be elected, I believe to be qualified and committed to take
care of the usual council business as well, with votes cast after careful
considerations.

Should I be elected and not find likeminded peers, or not get elected, I plan to
still work in this area going forward, after I clear my regular maintenance priority
backlog.