Board/Project Governance

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Fri, Sep 06, 2013 at 06:45:00AM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
> 
> So.  What if we could do better?  What if we could make the Board more
> representative of Fedora contributors from a composition standpoint?
> We have all these other committees and groups already doing the
> day-to-day stewardship of the project.  We have the Fedora Project
> Lead, basically, leading.  Maybe we can combine them.  Cutting to the
> chase, what if the Board was comprised of a representative from each
> of:
> 
> FESCo, Docs, Rel-Eng, QA, Ambassadors, Infrastructure, Design,
> Marketing, and <open>.
> 
> Each of those committees, which clearly have a large stake and vested
> interest in Fedora succeeding, would chose one member to appoint to
> their respective Board seat.  That person would be responsible for
> their group's interaction with the Board and the other groups.
> 
> Some of you might notice the composition proposed is essentially that
> of the Release Readiness meetings.  This isn't by coincidence.  Call
> it DevOps or whatever other trendy thing you want, but getting the
> stakeholders of something together to discuss the betterment of that
> thing just kind of makes sense to me.  It also shares ideas with the
> Fedora Council idea, which is by coincidence because I discovered that
> after I had thought about most of this.  Still good to see
> commonality.
> 
> The <open> seat could be anything.  I don't have a clear group that
> should fill it.  Maybe it can be appointed to gain valuable insight in
> specific areas (though we can always just ask for that insight
> anyway).  Maybe it could be a representative from the new Product
> Workgroups that are being formed.
> 
Being a little more flexible with <open> might be interesting.  Instead of
just a single seat, pull in a representative from the groups needed for
solving what the current project problems are.  Don't want to derail this
with something radical if this is a controversial idea, though.

> The really astute of you might notice that with a few exceptions, the
> _people_ on the Board might not even change that much.  That's FINE!
> The proposal isn't about people, it's about the composition of the
> Board.  It is interesting to note that under my own proposal I would
> no longer be on the Board.  I'm OK with that if it makes the project
> better positioned going forward.
> 
> I'm curious as to what people think.  I'm putting this out there as a
> discussion starter.  Hopefully the discussion it generates is positive
> and thought provoking.
> 
Huge +1.

When we discussed the Fedora Council waaay back in the beginning of jsmith's
term, we thought that this arrangement would have advantages like:

* As a group, always able to provide necessary insight into all aspects of
  the project.
* Able to communicate ideas, direction, and concerns to other areas of the
  project as a member of that community rather than as an outsider.
* Would likely help with the unclear relationship between FESCo and the
  Board; not so much by directly clarifying the realms that they operate in;
  more that the FESCo member on the Board would be better at communicating
  what's going on in each body and getting the flavour of the conversations
  correct.(btw, jwb -- thanks for participating in fesco meetings in this
  role for the past several weeks).
* Nothing would prevent the group from still serving as an extension of the
  FPL (being able to speak with the same authority as the current Board)
* Would cut down on election fatigue.

Anyhow, thanks for making this proposal!
-Toshio
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