Proposal: annual chair election

Hello all,

I recently thought about the role of the Chair in an ASF project.

Basically the Chair is the connection between project and the team. In
well working projects it means the chair writes reports and has
basically little to do. Still it seems that the chair gets some extra
attention when it is about decision making and performing new ideas. I
recently could observe this at the Apache Incubator. The Incubator has
(had) some problems and there were heated discussion how to solve it.
Finally Jukka Zitting arrived and somehow everybody trusted him
immediately. Jukka was elected as a chair and started to change things
in the Incubator. I must say he really does a great job and the
Incubator has become a better place now.

One could say, Jukka could have done this job as PMC and there is no
need to be chair. But in fact, I feel this is wrong and just gray
theory. I am pretty sure electing him as a chair was a wise decision
and gave him the chance to influence the project more.

That being said I think we need to do an annual election for this chair role.

If there are no other chair volunteers, the election is easy: just
confirm the current chair. If others want to take this role, let's
elect.

Why should one become a chair?

I guess, sometimes it is just interesting and exciting to look more
into the details of the ASF. I am not sure what my reasons are
exactly, but it's some combination of interest and fun. And I like
this community and want to help.

With an annual election we would have the chance to get a yearly fresh
breath into this project. In addition, the weight of this role is not
so heavy as with an unlimited period.

Thoughts?

Cheers
Christian