FESCo future

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sun, 2006-11-26 at 20:01 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> Paul W. Frields schrieb:
> > 1/  We need to get away from substituting "community members" for
> > "non-Red Hat employees."  Red Hatters are community members too, and the
> > unspoken implication is that there is a big wall there.  The very fact
> > that we're combining Core and Extras shows how much this factionism has
> > dwindled over the past three years.
> 
> Well, I agree with that in general. But I suspect if we don't have a "at
> leat xx% need to be non-redhatters" rule a lot of people will say "this
> is just another round in the never ending Red Hat game where they say to
> get the community involved without giving them rights". I'd like to
> avoid that. Any better idea?

Sorry, I should have been more clear -- I just had a concern with the
wording.  I think when we mean, "non-Red Hat employees," we should use
those words, since "community members" (in my mind) includes Red Hatters
and non-Red Hatters.

> > 2/  If the seats are elected, how and why do you propose the results be
> > tilted away from Red Hat employees -- for instance, if the majority of
> > the elected seats happened to go to Red Hat employees?
> 
> Then they don't get more seats then 50%. Similar to what gnome does for
> its board. If more than X members (X=three iirc -- or are it only two
> these days?) from one company get elected for the Board than only those
> X elected people get on the board.
> 
> > [...]
> >>  * the chair gets elected on the first meeting after a election
> >>
> >>  * If there is deadlock in a voting the decision is either deferred and
> >> brought back up in the next meeting or it is presented to the FPB for
> >> further discussion/guidance.
> > Is there a reason you went for an even number of seats?  With an odd
> > number, naturally the majority of seats have to be held either by Red
> > Hat employees or not.
> 
> And that's what I wanted to avoid.

But an election is likely to produce a majority one way or the other,
unless you want exactly 50% each of Red Hat and non-Red Hat folks.  (And
I would bet the majority by election, in the absence of some other
controlling regulation, is likely to result in non-RH folks outnumbering
the RH ones.)  I don't think it's a big worry either way, since there's
probably more chance of one group's members disagreeing among themselves
than there is for the groups to go all West Side Story on each other.

> >  But the veto rights assigned to special seats and
> > the chair should offset any worries of the minority group.
> 
> Hmmm. I still prefer a even number of seats to void problems from the
> start -- nobody should be forced to use the veto rights to often.

So did you mean we should have *exactly* 50% each Red Hat and non-Red
Hat seats, as opposed to "at least 50% [non-Red Hat] community members"?
Because if not, it's unlikely (although possible, of course) that an
election would produce that outcome spontaneously, thus making it
unnecessary to have an even number or worry about tie-breakers.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
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