Board/Project Governance

[inode0]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 12:51 PM, inode0
>
>
> [ Thanks.  I am just wondering about the specifics below]
>
>
>> The Board is tasked via the Fedora Trademark Guidelines with various
>> responsibilities which it takes seriously. I plan to ask Red Hat legal
>> what other arrangements they might be agreeable to where perhaps
>> another group of Fedora contributors could be tasked with these
>> responsibilities but I believe it is important for these
>> responsibilities to rest in the Fedora community somewhere.
>
>
> Did the board suggest any changes that didn't originate from Red Hat Legal
> and has been adopted?  If this is being done on active basis, it is indeed
> an important thing to do but I am not sure it requires as many board
> members.

The Board approves various uses of the trademarks without any
involvement of Red Hat legal. And I would cite the one recent case of
Red Hat legal making the decision without involving the Board as an
example of why the community should be the ones approving the use of
trademarks.

>> Someone needs to be in a position to resolve disputes within the
>> community and that responsibility now resides with the Board. While we
>> have created a Community Working Group to help resolve disputes it is
>> specifically designed to do mediation, not to do arbitration, make
>> judgments, or enforce sanctions. The Board gets to be the bad guy and
>> fortunately that obligation is seldom neede
>
>
>  Either the board should delegate entirely or not have a separate group IMO.

The Board did not delegate in this case. The Community Working Group
designed its own charter and the Board agreed to fill in the gaps.
There was a lot of discussion about this point and the CWG had very
good reasons to not want to do more than mediation.

>> FESCo has oversight of the technical direction of the products Fedora
>> produces, the Board has oversight over the rest of the project. This
>> is an area where I think the Board should probably be a lot more
>> active than it has been historically.
>
>
> I can't recall any examples in the last several years.

I can't either if by last several years you mean while I have been on
the Board. My recollection of the whole target audience business would
fall into that category and I think that soured many people from
having the Board be quite that aggressive in its actions. There isn't
much I care to point to in this venue but I do see some things in both
the Ambassador and Marketing worlds where I think there might be
opportunities.

John