Board/Project Governance

[Matthew Garrett]

Fedora is fundamentally a somewhat anarchic collective. Our governance 
model is built around fostering coordination rather than leadership. In 
that context, the existing board structure is an obvious failure. The 
meaningful things we do are make decisions on the use of project IP and 
come up with handwavy ideas about project direction. We're theoretically 
the last line of appeal against any other decisions, but in most cases 
we're less qualified to make that decision than whichever group did so 
originally.

Handling project IP is important. I don't think we need a board to do 
it. Determining project direction is important. I think an 
elected-but-not-actually-representative board is the wrong body to do 
that. Being entirely honest, the reason I stood for the board was that I 
was concerned about the potential for a refocusing of the project's 
direction in a way that didn't interest me. It's great that people chose 
to elect me, but right now I have no other involvement in Fedora's 
governance. My contributions to Fedora are fairly minimal - I work on a 
few tiny corners of some important packages, but otherwise I just talk a 
lot. The fact that it was so easy for me to get on the board and 
influence these decisions is arguably a failure in process.

So, a council-type arrangement seems entirely appropriate. I endorse 
this proposal.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org