Talk:Sugar Labs/Governance: Difference between revisions

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 :I've moved some of the details to subpages. --[[User:Walter|Walter]] 16:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
+== Decision Panels ==
+This seems to be the most controversial topic:
+'''One the one hand:'''
+As the instigator of this Decision Panel business, I should attempt to
+clarify the idea.  My goal is to make serving on the Oversight Board as
+unappealing as possible.  Ideally, it should be _difficult_ to find seven
+people willing to serve on the Oversight Board.  As such, the document
+specifies that members of the Oversight Board _cannot_ decide
+controversial issues.  It also specifies that members of the Oversight
+Board _must_ act as secretaries, taking minutes for every meeting of every
+committee.  Oversight Board members are also prohibited from voting in any
+of the committee meetings, even though they must attend to take minutes
+(that's been part of the draft from the beginning).  I hope this will be a
+very frustrating experience for members of the Oversight Board.
+I am a firm believer that the worst people to give power are those who
+want it.  The Oversight Board, as described so far, has the responsibility
+of keeping Sugar Labs running smoothly, but almost no power to decide the
+interesting issues.  This makes me very happy, as the Oversight Board is
+therefore most likely to attract people who are interested only in keeping
+Sugar Labs running, not pushing a particular personal agenda, even a
+technical agenda.  My hope is that people will be elected based on a
+history of being calm, focused, personable, and reasonable, not on the
+basis of any platform (they don't have the power to execute it) or
+technical knowledge (they can't use it).
+I would much rather keep the technical experts _out_ of governance until a
+technical decision must be made that requires domain-specific expert
+knowledge.  Most technical decisions should be made on the mailing lists
+anyway; only issues that must be decided in order for work to continue,
+and on which the community is otherwise deadlocked, should be escalated to
+a Decision Panel.  I expect the Oversight Board to be concerned almost
+exclusively with the mundane details of managing finances and
+partnerships, making sure the communications channels are open, etc.  I do
+not want the Oversight Board to be a Court of Last Resort.
+I still favor the presence of the Decision Panels section in the draft,
+but that's not surprising.  I see it as an easy lightweight system for
+moving political issues away from the Oversight Board.  I welcome other
+perspectives.
+--Ben
+'''On the other hand:'''
+Why would anyone volunteer for such service?  We'd get what it
+encourages: unmotivated people who don't really care, except for the
+political power of appointing people, and the *inevitable* recognition
+they get as part of the oversight board.  They won't have the respect of
+the community either; as written, board members can't serve on decision
+panels, and therefore can't make any of the "important decisions",
+presuming the board actually follows the bylaws and appoints a decision
+panel.  And it has a built in disincentive for creating committees and
+delegating (something we want to encourage, not discourage): the
+requirement that the board members act as secretaries, causing a yet
+larger time sink by board members.
+The board member can hide behind "the appointed committee" and absolve
+themselves of blame.
+So this separates authority from responsibility.  Anything controversial
+is by its nature something where each vote a board member makes can be
+held accountable for, and either recalled immediately or voted out at
+the next election, if appropriate.  Hopefully these votes occur very
+seldom; decisions should normally be being made below the board level,
+and the board only have to resolve disputes where the call is close.
+"The buck stops here" needs to be true for the board.
+It's hard enough to get people to do the grunt work to serve on boards
+in these projects.  You want the right people who are fully invested in
+that project's success.  We have to have some confidence that the
+electorate will elect sane people: I point to Gnome being sensible
+enough to *not* elect RMS to its board (he ran several years), and the
+fact that on the X.org board, we had trouble to get enough good
+candidates to get some of the people off the board who were *not*
+serving for the right reasons (in my opinion).
+--Jim
+== Membership ==
+I think that GNOME's membership criteria that you've borrowed here is a
+bit lower than I like. In Ubuntu, we use "significant and sustained"
+which basically boils down to having been around for at least a couple
+months and being able to get at least 2-3 endorsements from current
+members that say, "yeah, she's done quite a bit of good work." This is
+good because it makes membership more likely to be real stakeholders and
+also creates an incentive to long-term significant contributions.
+I also like the idea of automatic expiration each year. If folks can't
+be bothered to at least reply to an email once a year (you'd be surprised
+how often this happens in Ubuntu) they probably shouldn't be voting
+either.
+--Mako
+I don't mind having tougher criteria for developers, but unlike Gnome,
+I think we need some way to get participation from users, e.g.,
+classroom teachers in deployments, etc. To me, that is significant and
+sustained.
+--[[User:Walter|Walter]] 16:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
+Absolutely. There are lots of ways of contributing constructively and
+each should be recognized. I'm suggesting that there should be a common
+contribution threshold for membership -- whether it's software
+developers, content producers, teachers, whatever else, or any
+combination.
+--Mako
+== Other open details ==
+       o how the governance document is modified; what determines quorum for
+such actions
+       o how decisions are appealed
+       o how notice is given of decisions
+       o how do we adopt permanent governance regulations; as these currently
+are, they can at best be temporary until a membership exists and
+ratifies a more formal governance document....
+       o what to do about removing/recalling members/board members; it is the
+board that matters most here).
+       o how vacancies are filled
+       o limits on board membership by employer
+       o how money is disbursed.