Spins

[Mike McGrath]

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Adam Miller wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 03:36:05PM -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> >> Having the Board or any other group decide conflicts on an ad-hoc
> >> basis doesn't scale.  I'd predict that would lead to an increasingly
> >> jerry-rigged final product that works more poorly for everyone.
> >> Setting direction and focus is what the Board was created to do.  It
> >> may not be possible for every single person to be 100% happy at the
> >> end of the process, but the goals (in order) should be to establish
> >> that direction, and then ensure that contributors have freedom to try
> >> things outside of it.  Where there is a conflict, the first goal has
> >> to win out, just as with our freedom principle for instance.
> >>
> > I disagree with some of this. I think that it is exactly the mission of the
> > Board to decide conflicts on a somewhat ad-hoc (but not arbitrary) basis.
> > If the people who are doing the work set direction and focus, they are
> > delineating where they are going to take the people using their product.  If
> > people who are not doing the work set direction and focus, they are setting
> > forth limitations on what is possible.  Legal issues and clarifications of
> > how to apply free software principles to corner cases are areas where the
> > Board should be setting forth limitations.  Resolving conflicts between two
> > sets of contributors is also a limitation in that it tells the sides how
> > they must interact with each other to get back to business (this could be
> > telling one side they must give in to the other but hopefully the Board
> > members looking at the problem would be able to find a middle ground in
> > the specific problem).
> >
> > As for my distinction between ad hoc and arbitrary -- I agree that the Board
> > should be resolving conflicts from general principles (thus, not arbitrary).
> > But the decisions should be made for actual problems that exist, not by
> > creating a vision by which your project can be judged when youdeviate from
> > it.  My issue with the target audience and Board created vision ideals are
> > that the Board is then making decisions based on how it affects the target
> > audience or whether it fits into the vision they (or a past Board) had for
> > Fedora.  Before reaching that point, I would argue that the Fedora Project
> > would be better served by addressing how the Board's decision maximises the
> > ability of the current contributors who are involved to do their work better.
> >

<contributor hat>
It seems logical to me that contributors would want to be left alone to do
what they want and have the board empower them to do so.  I'm
contributing my time.  I should be allowed to do whatever I want and the
board should give me whatever resources they have to do that.
</contributor hat>


<board hat>
So there's no conflicts right now that I'm aware of that need resolving.

Our growth rate is slowing (while Linux's growth rate is growing faster).
Leaving our contributors to their on devices as we're doing now isn't
working and I'm certain I'm not alone in saying I'm not happy with where
things are right now.[1]
 </board hat>

So where does that leave us?

	-Mike

[1] I wish more people would be frank about this and take a stand about if
they're happy with the state our OS or not.