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*http://foundation.gnome.org/about/
*http://foundation.gnome.org/about/
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===Books discussing OSS projects===
===Books discussing OSS projects===
: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.