On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 01:18:09PM +0200, Sascha Thomas Spreitzer wrote: > Hello friends, > > i was having an overview over the CLA, which i signed in the past, and > the foundations and the governance descriptions in the wiki. > I know that I have signed the CLA and i feel tied to it, because I > gave my will for. > But; > > What exactly ties me as a fedorian to the governance or governance > model of fedora? > I can't find any contract like the CLA which puts the governance into force. > > Can you help me? Hi Sascha, This is a simple answer but it's also hopefully a good one. Like all sizable FOSS communities, Fedora is a social group that agrees on certain norms. We have governance mainly because the community generally agrees, once it's reached a certain size, it's more efficient to invest a representative group with the ability to make decisions after building consensus. There's no official contract to bind people to this leadership, but rather it's part of the social fabric of the Fedora community. Over time, on average, I'd hope that any such decisions with which someone doesn't agree are outweighed by the many benefits of working in the Fedora community with great people. There are plenty of FOSS communities that don't have the same type of governance model, so everyone certainly should have the right to choose communities based on this factor as well as many others. The Ambassadors team, for example, is made up of people who want to work together to spread clear messages about the Fedora Project and the distribution. To make their work more efficient, the Ambassadors formed FAmSCo and have a few regional groups to make it easier to coordinate events, media, and other grassroots work. A group like FAmSCo exists through the consensus of the larger Ambassadors team, but the whole Ambassadors team (many hundreds of individuals) wisely realizes that making team members sign some sort of contract isn't necessary to have things work efficiently. The social ties that bind Ambassadors (or indeed any Fedora Project team) are strong enough, along with open and transparent dialogue, to ensure that the governance for the team performs as the team expects. If that stops being the case, we encourage teams to look for new methods that help them succeed. -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ Where open source multiplies: http://opensource.com _______________________________________________ advisory-board mailing list advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board