Appointment of Board Members.

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 12:37:46PM -0700, John Poelstra wrote:
> 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.
> 
Yes.  And thus, the majority of decisions should not be made by the Board.

> 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.
> 
Lack of action is also an action.  Instead of the Board deciding to shoulder
the burden of creating an update vision it would be better (in the old [and
theoretically current] split power system) for a board member to ask fesco to
consider a proposal for doing updates.

> >
> > 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?
> 
Max and Thorsten would be the best people to ask about the motivations in
this time period from the people who actually had a hand in creating them.

The main reason that the Board was created to my not-inside-the-FPLs-head
view was to allow Fedora community members to:

*) have a discussion about private matters that formerly the FPL (and select
people that they chose to involve inside of RH) would have been the sole
voice on

*) disperse the powers and responsibilities of the FPL to lead the Fedora
Community from one person to a group of Fedora Community Members.

> > 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 recall that as well.  However, where that's where you're choosing to start
your story; that's the middle of mine.  If I had access to the fesco
archives still, I could come up with a timeline of that event, the
reasons it came about (I think it might have to do with the Board being
formed in the first place but I'm not too clear on that without going back
and reading the private archives),  and what things came out of it.

> 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.
> 

Sure -- but the proper response in an empowered FESCo would be to delegate
the work that they have out rather than the Board to take it upon
themselves.

> > 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.
> 
The main thing here is that the Board would need to commit to not working on
those issues themselves.

> > 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.
> 
You are reading in malice where I am only stating ignorance to paraphrase
Greg's favorite saying :-).

Not even ignorance, really, but will power.  I think there's been
a combination of a strong Board and a weak FESCo for many years now.  The
Board has been very willing to take on additional responsibility that FESCo
was unwilling to defend.  So it's time for us to rethink the relationship
between the Board and FESCo.  We can either reset the alignment and promote
a strong FESCo again or we can realize that the separation of an elected
Board and an elected FESCo that we expect to make decisions about direction
in its own bailiwick has failed -- and we need to make a new model where we
elect one body to make decisions that delegates out that authority to other
groups as needed.

Electing people to FESCo in order to make a difference only to have the
Board telling those decision makers what to do puts everyone under stress
because of false expectations.  You once said that you didn't understand why
fesco existed since it just seemed like middle management so let's really
evaluate this -- maybe FESCo is middle management and we have no reason to
elect them.  Or maybe we really do want them to be more than that and
therefore we should make sure that they have both the power and the
responsibility to do that.

-Toshio
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