Re: Re: A Call For Open Governance Of X Development (Egbert Eich)

Mark Vojkovich wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Keith Whitwell wrote:
> 
> 
>>Hmm, I think there's a big difference between a commercial company and an open 
>>source project in terms of the skillset required to set the direction for the 
>>group.
>>
>>I'd see the ideal membership of an elected advisory board as being the type of 
>>experienced developers who are involved in the current BOD and core team.  In 
>>fact, if there ever were an elected board, I don't have any doubt that David 
>>Dawes would continue to find himself the leader, and rest of the BOD & core 
>>teams as valued members.
> 
> 
>    I think this depends on who you let vote.  If this vote took 
> place on Slashdot you would likely have: ESR, Stallman, Keith Packard,
> Jim Gettys and CowboyNeal running the project.  I wouldn't want 
> to work for any of these people.
> 
>    One of the problems with voting that is too open is that this
> becomes a popularity contest.  I believe that most of the community
> doesn't have the knowledge necessary to pick the leadership that
> is best for the project - they merely know who they LIKE, and they
> haven't had enough experience to know who they can actually TRUST.
> Also, they're not the people who have to work under this management.
> It's people like myself who have to work under this management.
> 
>    We've already seen an example of someone who thinks the current
> management is incompetent because his laptop doesn't work 
> correctly.  Who wants that guy voting?
> 
>    Overall, I think your suggestions are good ones, but careful
> consideration needs to be given to how we allow people to get
> in positions of policy making.  In the current organization, 
> voting hasn't really been necessary - senior contributors have
> generally come to an easy concensus on what the right thing
> to do is, so I'm still trying to figure out what an advisory
> board would do.

Well the two ideas I have are somewhat circular, so probably can't exist at once:

	1) The powers of the advisory board include (but might not be limited to) 
granting and revoking cvs privileges.
    	
	2) The committers get to vote who goes on the board.

Actually by relaxing 2) you get something reasonable:

	2b) Everyone who's ever had a patch accepted can vote for the board.

People who've submitted a oneliner once probably won't be bothered voting, so 
I think that potential argument is a straw man.

Any system is open to abuse.  If it becomes apparent that abuse is taking 
place, it will be necessary to change the system again.

Anyway, I agree that careful consideration is required before making changes. 
  These ideas are starting points for discussions, not demands or dictats or 
whatever...

And let me reiterate:  I think the big question is CVS access, a board for me 
is secondary, but give it a role managing CVS access and it gains some 
concrete relevance.


Keith