board followup to "Connotation analysis for Fedora Project codename"

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 05:17:28PM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Rex Dieter <rdieter at math.unl.edu> wrote:
> > The board discussed the feedback stemming from the "Connotation analysis for
> > Fedora Project codename" thread, and has agreed to add a period of community
> > comment and feedback of at least one week, prior to putting up a final list
> > of release names for community vote.  This will take effect starting with
> > the F19 naming process.
> >
> > In practical terms, we envision starting this community feedback period at
> > the same time that Red Hat legal is vetting names, and that reviewing said
> > feedback will require adding one week to future (F19+) naming schedules.
> 
> Why at the same time as legal review?  If the Board/community is going
> to disallow a name due to connotation, then it's a waste of resources
> (both human and financial) to have lawyers vetting that name.
> 
The thought was that the timeline for vetting names looks usually like this:

* [several weeks] Name suggestions made
* Naming closed
* [Few days] Board vettes names for obvious problems (no is-a relationship,
  legal conflicts, obvious offensivness).
* Passed onto Legal
* [One or more weeks] Legal vettes the names
* [Few days] Legal returns the list of names, we setup the election, vote.

Community feedback about problems with certain names can be raised at any
time prior to the Board vetting the names and then the Board can use that
feedback to strike that name from the list that goes to Legal.  However,
names may be added to that list until very close to the Board vetting so
formally asking some group to vette the names and receive feedback about
whether there's a problem at that time would be a bit of a rush.

Making sure that some at least somewhat multicultural group have a list of
names to vette seemed to be good to do in parallel with the legal review due
to:

* An alternative would be to do the community vetting before the list goes
  to Legal.  But that means that we delay the whole naming process by that
  timeout period.
* The list of names that actually pass the Board's check for conflicts is
  usually quite small.  So having one or two names less doesn't seem that
  large of a win.
* The Legal review is a largely non-transparent portion of the process.  We
  never know how long it's going to take.  It just seems efficient to get
  something else done while we're waiting.

None of these are knockout reasons but hopefully all together they explain
why we think it's a good idea to run them together like this.

-Toshio
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