[Request for Comments] Governance change for Fedora Project

[inode0]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 10:57:36AM -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
>> Leadership happens when a person sees a problem that needs to be
>> solved, looks around and don't see anyone solving it, and then takes a
>> deep breath and steps up and says "I think we should solve this
>> problem, and here's what I'm going to do about it."
>>
>> Governance happens when people are competing over scarce resources --
>> time to implement ideas, space on the home page, money for events --
>> and someone needs to decide who gets what resources.
>>
>> Is the consensus that Fedora needs more governance, or more leadership?
>
> Something like this: current Fedora governance doesn't enable leadership.
>
> I've been working on that "deep breath" approach with Fedora.next, and I
> think the current structure in combination with the size of the project
> makes it more difficult than it should be to do anything across Fedora as a
> whole. There was a conversation in the Flock session which didn't quite get
> recorded in the notes but which I think is very interesting here: Vit
> Ondruch noted that Fedora.next didn't come from the Board, and wondered if
> it was at all "approved" or "official". In fact it is, but the current board
> approach to this is basically saying "okay, we won't stand in the way of
> this".

I don't think this summarizes accurately how I felt as a board member
when approving it. I intended and understood that approval to be a
strong statement to the Fedora community that this was the direction
the project should go.

> As I imagine the ideal, the board or council would be somewhere were people
> could bring ideas -- even if they aren't originated there -- and, for
> example, the representative for the Fedora Ambassadors could look at the
> proposal from that point of view, communicate concerns back and forth with
> the larger ambassadors group, and if the proposal is accepted, communicate
> _that_ back, including what that means.

I have discussed issues and considerations that Fedora.next would have
in terms of both booth presentations and the choice of media that we
select to press and distribute at events following the next release
with the ambassadors in North America. It was just an opening of a
conversation, I gave my pitch and let them take some time to consider
it.

I do think that a new organization with this sort of work as its
primary or sole objective could be much more effective than random
board members interacting with the silos where board members happen to
participate.

John