On Tue, 25 Apr 2006, Jeremy Katz wrote: > > Leader (perhaps aka maintainer), absolutely. Chair of a committee, > > yes, but dependent on size of the project of course. > > Agreed -- we shouldn't be imposing that everything which is a project or > SIG be run like it's a government. Not saying we should. But somebody needs to be accountable for the basic tasks of every PMC, at the very least. Meaning: * Someone who holds periodic meetings, and makes sure that the appropriate people know about them and attend them. * Someone who ensures that *simple* public minutes are provided for these meetings. i.e. a few paragraphs, max. * Someone who keeps an updated list of "tasks to be completed", and drives people to complete the tasks they've promised to complete. * Someone who has the authority to make hard decisions -- or failing that, acts as the conduit when the Board makes hard decisions. >From my perspective, these are the items that differentiate a PMC from a SIG. A PMC has a clear charter to "get stuff done" -- and the mechanisms by which the PMCs do that should be as consistent as possible, so that the outside observer can stay informed without too much trouble. What I am *NOT* talking about: * Someone who holds lots of votes. * Someone who omphaloskepsizes endlessly about Procedural Issues. > Especially in cases where we're talking about chunks of coding, strong > leadership in the form of a project maintainer is likely to often work > better. This is one of the things which is often pointed to as a reason > for why the Linux kernel is more successful than the various free BSDs Strong coders are great at moving a project along, but they tend to suck at communicating the progress of the project -- and that communication is one of the big things that's missing. People just don't have time to follow every mailing list to keep up; even the Board will be incapable of it. This kind of high-level communication also takes time and effort to do well, and it can be thankless. Maybe the coder-project-lead appoints someone to do this work. Doesn't matter, really, but ultimately, the Leader is responsible for everything getting done. Here's what I'm basically asking for, I guess -- maybe a simple wiki page that looks like this: === OFFICIAL FEDORA PROJECTS. Fedora Extras. * Mission: The one-paragraph missions statement that every Fedora PMC should have. * Project Lead: Thorsten Leemhuis (link) * Meetings: (whenever) * Minutes: (link) (maybe to a blog / rss feed?) * Tasks: (link) Fedora Docs. * Mission: ... ...and so on, and so on. It also calls these open questions: 1. Is Fedora Directory Server a real project, by this standard? 2. How about Fedora Translations? 3. How about Fedora Live CD? === SIGs, on the other hand, can be dead simple. Just a descriptive paragraph and a link to a mailing list. My $0.02. --g ------------------------------------------------------------- Greg DeKoenigsberg || Fedora Project || fedoraproject.org Be an Ambassador || http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors -------------------------------------------------------------
