On Wed, 25 Jun 2008, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
But ask yourselves:
* What does the board do which directly impacts "joe average Fedora
contributor"? IMO, almost nothing - It's FESCO, which does.
There is some truth to this. To some degree, this is by design. If
Fedora governance as a whole is working effectively, problems are resolved
before they reach the board. A board that is meddling in every decision
does not scale.
Sometimes the board squabbles about issues like Codeina. Sometimes the
board deals with difficult legal/policy issues that are, in fact,
*extremely* impactful to the Fedora community, but can't be discussed
openly. And I can understand how sometimes it seems like the board
doesn't do much.
* How has the board been composed so far? An overwhelming RH majority.
Yes. But consider: a good number of people on the board did *not* work
for Red Hat when they first joined the community. For people who aspire
to work on Fedora full-time, serving on the board is one of the most
effective means of getting there.
* How do you expect the board be composed in future?
%50 RH assigned seats, the rest is being elected by a RH dominated group
of voters.
Just because the group of voters is RH-dominated today doesn't mean it
will be that way forever. Bear in mind: the membership has more than
doubled in a matter of a few months.
So, everything but seeing a ca. 2/3-3/4 RH-dominated board would be a
surprise. The next board will have a 90-100% RH-dominated board, well,
the overall situation hasn't changed at all. This board is designed to
be a RH internal business.
You can say that all you want, but it doesn't make it so. If you want to
assert that the *effect* is that it feels as though RH is making too many
decisions, that's fine, and that's a worthwhile discussion. But for you
to assert that the *intent* of the board is to be "RH internal business"
is a slap in the face to all of the people who have stuggled against *very
long odds* to create a public governance model for Fedora.
Now for finding candidates.. you can always run yourself or find
someone you want to run and get them nominated (eg get them to want to
run).
One can't do everything oneself. That's one of fundamental working
principles of democracy. I simply could not find "the candidate" I would
like to vote for and therefore resorted to "voting for the least evil".
If I wasn't a deeply convinced democrat, who takes participating in
votes for governments for granted, I probably would have abstained the
vote.
This is a perfect example of why governments frequently suck -- because
people leave the hard work of governance to others. Here's the facts:
democratic governments, all over the world, are usually run by the people
who bother to show up.
I can see a lot of good points in the discussion. But if it all boils
down to "I don't have time to participate in Fedora governance," then just
say that. Because that's really what you are saying.
--g
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