Appointment of Board Members.

[John Poelstra]

Toshio Kuratomi said the following on 08/16/2010 11:34 AM Pacific Time:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 07:09:47AM -0700, John Poelstra wrote:
>> Toshio Kuratomi said the following on 08/13/2010 01:48 PM Pacific Time:
>>> Notes:
>>> * In the Max Spevack era, the Board was pushed away from making decisions
>>>     for two reasons: 1) FESCo was deemed to be the body that understood the
>>>     technical issues at hand and therefore the body that should make most of
>>>     the decisions regarding Fedora.  2) The Board was not all elected and
>>>     therefore didn't have as much of a "mandate from the people".  In the Paul
>>>     Frields era, the Board started to make many more decisions.  I don't think
>>>     that's necessarily a good thing as they've trampled all over reason #1
>>>     above but being fully elected would help to alleviate reason #2.
>>
>> I don't recall things going down this way.  Please name some concrete
>> examples of this "trampling" so we can be discussing the same thing.
>>
> The first example of it that I can think of was at the transition between
> the Max Spevack and Paul Frields eras with Codeina.  Here's some pointers
> from the middle to mid-end of that:
>
> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2008-March/005032.html
> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2008-March/005054.html
>
> Since then, there's been the pieces of the Board vision that have been about
> technical aspects and implementation.  For instance, the Target Audience
> discussion and outcome:
>    http://lwn.net/Articles/358865/
>
> (btw, I was unable to find this written up on the wiki -- stickster, is that
> on purpose or is it there somewhere that I can't find it?)
>
> And the whole updates vision piece:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Stable_release_updates_vision

The board discussions I remember were very careful NOT to get involved 
in the technical implementation.  Are you suggesting the Board has no 
business deciding anything that is technical or touches things that are 
technical?  Where is the line?  A majority of what happens in Fedora is 
technical.

The board saw that nothing was getting decided on the devel list and 
FESCo wasn't taking the issue on so the board came up with some general 
parameters for what they thought was best for the distribution (part of 
Fedora's overall purpose), careful not to lay out the technical 
implementation details and asked FESCo to take action on it.

>
> What's the common thread in these?  Here's my subjective "History of Fedora
> Governance".  I feel that at the start of Fedora, there was a cabal of
> engineers working on getting things done so that we could have
> a distribution.  This became formalized into FESCo which we see now.  In
> these early days we also had Fedora Project Leaders with gradually
> increasing power.  They did work coordinating resources within Red Hat,
> selling Fedora to influential people within Red Hat, helping to mediate
> disputes within the community, branched into media relations, and gradually
> took on the role of managing and representing the Project as a whole.  In
> order to keep power from becoming too concentrated, the Fedora Project Board
> was formed which took on some of these duties for the FPL.
>

For any of the people around at this time, were these decisions made 
based on the distribution and uses of "power" or were there other 
motivations behind the decisions and structure created?

> These examples all have the Fedora Project Board crossing over from
> restricting itself to decisions about the Project as a whole into making
> decisions about the Fedora Distribution.
>
 >
> But that's perhaps inevitable.  George Orwell put it impolitely as "All
> power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".  Perhaps a way of
> phrasing this without the negative connotation of corruption is: "Power
> tends to grow into a vaccuum".  To me, it seems that FESCo has been giving
> up a lot of its duties, responsibilities, and powers and the Board has been
> absorbing them.
>

I guess we have a different recollection and interpretation of the past. 
  I recall a time when FESCo didn't know what its responsibilities 
really were or what they wanted them to be so they asked the board to 
define them for them.  I also recall some occassions where it was argued 
that FESCo should be more involved in the day to day direction, creation 
and development of the distro and yet the response from some FESCo 
members was that they already had too much to do and couldn't take on more.

> One way to deal with this is to give those powers back to FESCo.
>

1) What specific "power(s)" should the board give to FESCo that they 
don't already have?

2) Would FESCo willingly accept this power and own the associated 
responsibilities?

It would be good to hear from some current FESCo members on this topic.

> Another way would be to merge FESCo and the Board.
>
> Not sure which of those is best at the moment.
>
> -Toshio

I think there are a variety of perspectives here that are equally valid. 
  It is too simplistic to me to say that the current situation is 
because of the board's over-reaching power and trampling [1] on 
FESCo--nor is it representative of the attitude or motivations of any 
board meeting I observed in my almost three years of involvement with 
the board.

John

[1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/trampling
1.  To beat down with the feet so as to crush, bruise, or destroy; tramp on.
2. To treat harshly or ruthlessly: would trample anyone who got in their 
way.