governance, fesco, board, etc.

[Max Spevack]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> Or differently:
> * If FESCo had decided to allow "non-free firmware", they would have
> been shot by the community and/or RH, like the community/RH did on
> similar occasions.

I think if any group of people within Fedora decided they wanted to 
drastically revers the "freedom" stance of the distribution, they would 
find themselves shot down by the Fedora Board, and it wouldn't be some 
sort of 5-4 RH/community split vote.

> * FESCo can't decide on legal/patent matters, because they lack the
> knowledge. One escape would have been RH to provide them with legal
> advisors, or some volunteers to appear, but ... neither happened :(

Legal issues are one of the places where Red Hat's sponsorship of Fedora 
comes in.  Red Hat's lawyers are Fedora's lawyers.  There are plusses 
and minuses to that arrangement.  Part of the nature of the legal work 
requires a lot of the interaction to flow through Red Hat people, since 
the lawyers need to be very careful about what they say on public 
mailing lists.

> * FESCo can decide on "packaging matters" despite they lack the detailed
> knowledge, because FPC provides them with "recommendations".

And who's on the packaging committee?  Looks to me like it's 4 RH folks 
and 5 community folks, and that's only because Toshio just got hired by 
Red Hat.  The packaging committee is given significant autonomy.  I 
can't remember an example of the Fedora Board meddling, changing, or 
telling the Packaging Committee what to do.  Maybe Fesco has a more 
contentious relationship with the Packaging committee that I'm not aware 
of.

> * FESCo could decide on "tactical matters/executive jobs" (e.g. fixing 
> release dates, establishing committees, deciding on mailing lists), 
> because this doesn't require detailed knowledge, ... in many cases 
> this doesn't happen, because other "leaders" overruled them.

I think my initial post at the top of this thread discusses a new, more 
open, way for this sort of stuff to be handled.

> I don't see what they could decide what FAB can't and vice-versa. Both 
> widely overlap. There is one difference: FESCo was supposed to be 
> elected, while FAB is "RH proclaimed".

FAB???  There's no membership list for FAB.  It's "whoever joins this 
mailing list, writes something, and hits send."  You make your own 
reputation, and that will determine how much "authority" an email you 
send to Fedora Advisory Board has, and how much the various "leaders" 
who read FAB take stock in what you say.

I think of FAB as a clearing house for people who have leadership 
positions throughout Fedora, to talk about higher-level issues in a 
single place.  The goal of giving greater empowerment to FESCO is, as 
Axel put in one email, to give some level of separation between the 
strategic decision making from the day to day engineering decision 
making.

--Max