Changes

no edit summary
Line 6: Line 6:  
*http://foundation.gnome.org/about/
 
*http://foundation.gnome.org/about/
 
*
 
*
      
===Books discussing OSS projects===
 
===Books discussing OSS projects===
Line 22: Line 21:     
:I've moved some of the details to subpages. --[[User:Walter|Walter]] 16:43, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 
: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.