Board Composition Proposal

[Mike McGrath]

On Tue, 17 Aug 2010, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 10:28 AM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 17 Aug 2010, Jesse Keating wrote:
> >
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> On 8/17/10 10:16 AM, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> >> >> > My what a paranoid view you have.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Also, I rather take offense that you consider a more conservative
> >> >> > approach to updates to our stable releases counter to the "roots" of
> >> >> > Fedora, particularly when you consider that Fedora is rooted in Red Hat
> >> >> > Linux.
> >> >> >
> >> > Thanks for being excelllent!
> >> >
> >>
> >> I'm sorry, I'm trying to be excellent, however I cannot put myself in
> >> your shoes to see your viewpoint.
> >>
> >
> > I'm a little confused too.  I don't see anyone from FESCo saying they'd
> > like to do X but haven't been allowed to because of the board.  But I'm
> > not sure if that's what he's advocating or not.
> >
> > Some of the positions Toshio has taken seems to say he'd prefer to see
> > FESCo be the exception to our normal organizational structure in that it
> > shouldn't report to the board (unlike all the other bodies).  I could be
> > wrong.
> >
> > Toshio, would you mind maybe re-stating what you're proposing from an org
> > chart view?  Or maybe correct me if I'm completely misreading you.  Email
> > is the worst possible format for discussions like these :(
> >
> So I've had a few discussions with people that will hopefully give me
> better language to say what I mean here :-)
>
> 1) Part of this is historical.  As Max stated earlier in this thread,
> the Board and FESCo's relationship was originally setup a bit
> differently because FESCo had actively been a community body that was
> doing great things in the realm of Fedora Extras before the merge and
> before the Board's existence.  In setting up the Board, FESCo kept
> much of its old powers and responsibilities even though the Board was
> theoretically a higher power.
>
> 2) In some ways, I saw (and I think some others saw) the Board as an
> extension of the FPL.  The FPL was delegating duties and
> responsibilities to a partially community elected entity so that 1)
> The FPL wasn't a single point of failure, 2) the decisions weren't
> being made solely by one person.  However, there are expectations of
> the FPL that I, at least, thought of as transferring to the Board as
> well but others obviously do not.  In this case, the expectation that
> a good FPL is there to advise and guide but unless their actions are
> going to sink the ship, lets the people doing the work control their
> own destiny.
>
> So if you look at this historical view, you'd have co-rulers of which
> one is the junior partner.  Maybe an org chart like this:
>
>                             == Board ==
> == FESCO ==            |   ||
>           ||                        |   ||
>           +-----------------+   ||
>           ||                            ||
>  == Other bodies ==      ||
>                               == Bodies with no FESCo oversight ==
>
> Where double lines are a strong, hierarchical relationship and single
> lines are more of an advisory capacity (but with the possibility of an
> overruling veto if need be).
>
>
> Now -- this is not to say that this is the way things should be.  We
> could change this and make FESCo definitively underneath the Board in
> a strict hierarchy.  But if so, I think we should state with certainty
> what the relative duties and responsibilities are and where people who
> want to effect change need to focus their time and energy.  Do you
> want to change the update strategy?  You should go to the Board
> because they take ultimate responsibility for making changes that
> affect the end users.  Do you have a complaint to file about a
> maintainer abusing their provenpackager status?  That should go to
> FESCo because they take care of specific cases where there's already a
> policy laid out.  I think that there's both documenting and untangling
> to be done here -- and because most of this was unwritten, there's an
> opportunity to throw out and revise some of the unwritten rules (and
> maybe some of the written rules) along the way.
>
> Leaving things in the current state where I have a different idea of
> what FESCo's role versus the Board verus the FPL than you than Jesse
> than Kevin Kofler is probably the worst state of affairs.
>

This sparked further discussion (and a fancy svg) on IRC.  Feel free to
read up.

http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-advisory-board/2010-08-17/fedora-advisory-board.2010-08-17-18.33.log.html

	-Mike