governance, fesco, board, etc.

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2007-06-12 at 08:10 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2007 at 10:42:16PM -0700, John Poelstra wrote:
> > <disclaimer>
> > I have a very primitive understanding of FESCo.  Each time I try to 
> > understand it (asking on fedora-devel or searching the wiki) I have come 
> > up empty-handed.  I'm not against FESCo, I simply do not understand what 
> > it is supposed to be or do.
> 
> History is important here. fesco was the head of the Extras section
> and was in charge of all bits around it. The general Fedora direction
> was given by the board. As such fesco has been good at making
> technical decisions. After the merge it also changed its name to
> reflect that (making "extras" to "engineering").
> 
> The current model that Max targets is to document separation of
> 
> o strategical or large scale political decisions,
> 
> from the
> 
> o execution and implementation thereof
> 
> If you want to compare to other models, maybe the CEO/CTO model could
> apply next (although still very different). Or maybe the
> captain/executive officer model would also be comparable.
>
> The issue of middle-managemnt you named (but I already trimmed, sorry)
> is what is being tried to be avoided. Consider the many SIGs/subgroups
> etc. offsprings of fesco, e.g. fesco could theoretically harbor all of
> them inside fesco from the authoritative POV, but that would
> practically lead to chaos. So anything that looks larger and still
> self-contained is separated off fesco and attached beneath of it. That
> way the board has only vertical interface and can focus on its core
> tasks.
> 
> So in short: The board gives the direction and fesco brings you there.

Well, FExtraSCo also was meant to be a counterpart/weight to RH and
representation of the community against RH. It being democratically
elected was meant to emphasize its importance and to provide the
community with means to identify with FESCo, and thereby provide better
acceptance with their decisions.

Unfortunately, current FESCo has degraded themselves into Engineering
and left all strategic decisions to 100% RH controlled organs. 
IMO, i.e. FESCo has degraded from Fedora Extra's government to an
administration bureau. 

As such I find a democratically FESCo superfluous, because such tasks
are better performed by technical committees populated with dedicated
specialists. FESCo isn't such an entity.

Ralf