On Wed, Sep 03, 2014 at 03:15:06PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote: > > My alternative proposal is as stated earlier in the thread - the change to > > the council is fine, but I'd suggest it still be vested with decision-making > > power, rather than a mere advisory role. > The repercussions of this difference area big enough that I think it should > be considered a separate proposal -- it makes the composition of the Okay, so having thought about this further, MOAR THOUGHTS! The Fedora Project Leader is defined on the wiki as "President, CEO, Chair, Fearless Leader, whatever-you-want-to-call-it", but in practice it's never been a position where one issues executive orders. The wiki goes on to explain that it's not a dictatorship role, and gives "leads the Fedora Project Board" as the effective mechanism. In some situations, this works. But for most things, it is difficult, because the practical processes of the board seem to default to inaction, which turns into either trying to push the board for more, or to just a dead end. To be clear, I don't think there's any particular _blame_ here; it's just kind of how it's set up, and the end result isn't productive for anyone involved. So, the proposals where the FPL has greater assumed authority are appealing; the red tape is replaced by personal responsibility. But, vesting that in one person doesn't seem right for Fedora either, and not just because all of my dictator suits are at the cleaner's right now. Although the FPL badge says "Apex"¹, Fedora leadership should reflect our collective vision, and no one person can possibly get that right. I think the fundamental change we need isn't _exactly_ over how members are selected, although that's part of the picture. I'd like to see a leadership body drawn from active areas of the community, *and* where the members are empowered to make decisions in their own areas — accountable to the other people working on that area directly, and to the rest of the project through the rest of the council. For most cases, it'd be okay for the FPL or any other council member to _just do_ something in their area, as long as it's communicated openly and can be easily revisited if necessary. When something feels a little more momentous, we'd use the more formal lazy consensus² method of raising the issue first and waiting a few days for comments. And for the occasional really big issue — dealing fundamentally with the Fedora values — we would use like near-unanimous consensus³. I know we traditionally use voting for making decisions in Fedora, but this system has the advantage of working better with a flexible number of members, and potentially a _larger_ number. This can even work with _either_ the two-body or one council systems — the difference is basically in whether there are some specific things we want to separate out -- in John's plan, that's stewardship of values, plus conflict resolution, trademarks, and legal issues. Both have strengths and drawbacks, but I'm leaning strongly towards preferring the single council and keeping it, as Bill says, vested with decision-making powers, although in the modified way outlined above. This makes authority for action a lot more clear, makes it more obvious where exactly to turn for specific things, and directly connects the people making big decisions about the project to the people _doing_ the project. ---- 1. <https://badges.fedoraproject.org/badge/apex> 2. If you're not familiar with the concept of lazy consensus, there's a good description at <https://rave.apache.org/docs/governance/lazyConsensus.html> 3. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making#Near-Unanimous_Consensus> -- Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ board-discuss mailing list board-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/board-discuss
