Just collecting and responding to some specific thoughts from <https://fedorahosted.org/board/ticket/9>, rather than cluttering that ticket with discussion. Note that these aren't by any means all of the comments -- please see the ticket for that. Eric Christensen (sparks): ---- > * Flock proposal with members coming from the projects within the Project. > * FPL does not have final say. Can you elaborate on this? It sounds an awful lot like "C" to me, but you voted -1 to that. > * Concern: SIGs can be negated and could mean that change could never come > to Fedora as those in power have the choice to not reduce/remove their > power. As I understand this, the worry is that a model where seats are tied to a specific "Fedora org chart" could make it hard for new groups to get a voice. I think there are number of ways we could deal with that formally, including at large seats or even a council position focused on "emerging interests". But I'm also not strongly concerned about this as a problem: as always, the most power in Fedora comes from working with other people to get things done, and the council/board *should* be flexible based on where this is happening. (So, yes, let's make sure we make that adaptability part of the plan.) Neville Cross (yn1v) ---- > * B: I think that two bodies may not be the ideal solution on the long > run, but I see it as a very good step in the general direction that we > want to achieve: productivity. Is good because is a small step and will > give us something to try out without disrupting too much. It will be > easier to balance elected and appointed people toward long term > perspective and the task at hand. So the way of selecting who will fill a > given position can be decided later. Two bodies means split the different > resposabilities, but this also can be decided later. I don't actually have anything to respond to on this but I think it makes the case well so I'm quoting it. :) > C: I have the concern that this proposal need much elaboration on how > people will be selected (to avoid words elected/appointed). FPL and the > team will have all responsabilities. Having a good way to achieve the > right mix of meritocracity and democracy will need to be resolvd before > this option be pushed forward. I agree that it needs that to be worked out — it's less inherently clear than the other proposals. I also agree that meritocracy and democracy are crucial ingredients in the mix, but I don't think that they are opposed on an axis. Garrett Holmstrom (gholms) --- > * Proposal C needs to explicitly mention that someone can say "-1" when he or > she believes an unannounced change needs review. Rollbacks are often not > straightforward when one is not working with code. Yes, definitely. And we should clearly set expectations towards open communication as the default — situations where something is _suprising_ and gets a -1 should be cause for reflection and better communication the next time. Christoph Wickert (cwickert) ---- > * A: Council should not only be advisory to the FPL but members should vote > about issues. FPL strives for consensus, has the casting vote and veto > powers. Basically just like today; I don't want to change the role of the > FPL but I'm afraid the wording or the proposal makes it sound too > powerful. To go back to some of the earlier discussion: I think governance decisions work well with committee voting, when there are different options for division of resources to be decided on. (Approving a budget, say.) But for more active proposals, it ends up being focused on the bureaucratic process of getting the vote to happen rather than on _doing_. > * C: I think lazy consensus will work most of the times, but for a > community of Fedora's size, 72 hours probably is not enough time to > speak up. I'm afraid it will lead to a stronger dominance of people > working on Fedora full-time (a.k.a. Red Hatters). Yeah, I think the time depends on how big the action is — 72 hours is just an example. Some things need to be discussed and communicated over weeks or months. On the other hand, I would hope that council members would be able to at least say "Hold on — I need to think about this one some more" within a few days. > Last but not least a new and possibly crazy idea: Today the board is half > elected and half appointed. How about a new body, that is half elected as > today, but the other half is elected/appointed on a committee level? I > think this would combine the advantage proposals the council (having all > stakeholders in the group) with the board (democratic legitimization > through election) and at the same time minimize the problems of lazy > consensus (dominance of a few). Part of the problem here is number of seats. If we try to represent a significant portion of Fedora's subgroups with group-selected positions, we're probably _already_ at a council as large as the current board. Adding an equal number of elected positions makes the council huge. (On the other hand, with a lazy consensus model, this _might be okay_ — I notice that many of the Apache PMCs are gigantic.) Also, thinking kind of along those same lines, there's also the category of "fixed positions" — like the FPL role, and a possible new OSAS liaison position (working with the ambassadors and user community and the community budget), and the example of a diversity chair we talked about at Flock — these should be merit based (because.... that's better!) but in some cases we might want to select them in a way other than soliciting subcommunity representatives. -- Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ board-discuss mailing list board-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/board-discuss
