The "Membership" section of the governance charter draft

["Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"]

On 10/31/2013 12:55 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> On 10/30/2013 06:05 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
>> Actually FESCo revisited the requirement of one of it's member having to
>> be a member of each WG ( with the exception of the initial one of course
>> ) to just there has to be appointed liason.
> Oh okay, I was unaware of this, thanks for pointing it out. Is there any
> place where I can read more about this so I have more of the background?

It go decided on the fesco meeting that was held straight after our 
meeting so it's no wonder you might have missed it ;)

> Your draft says, "the remaining two members coming from the Server
> Community itself" so my suggested requirement of system administration
> or enterprise OS experience is an attempt to qualify whether or not one
> comes from the 'server community.' If you think that specific
> illustration of what coming from the server community mean isn't good,
> can you maybe provide what you were specifically thinking of when you
> mentioned 'server community,'

The role of server administrators

>   in your draft? Who were you thinking of /
> how would you define such a person?

Person that is active in his field but in essence you cannot apply any 
particular role to a community of volunteers since the role they play is 
what matters to *them* and what *they* decide at the moment they 
contribute *their free time* to it.

> To be fair, I don't think requiring either system administrator
> experience or experience working on an enterprise OS is so rigorous a
> requirement as a Red Hat certification. I also don't think we have to
> verify it; it's unlikely some unknown person from left field who we
> aren't already friends with / familiar with from around Fedora is going
> to show up, right?

Apply what you just said to the entire nominators for all the working 
groups

>   But certainly, I think it would help to have people
> who have this experience make up the majority (5) of the group because
> don't you need to understand about how servers are used to understand
> how to develop a successful server product?

Yes to develop a server product, for PRD no you dont.

> My training / background /
> experience as a UX designer at least has always pointed towards
> understanding your user's needs as most important to developing a good
> product.
>
> How do you think the requirement would drive away potential
> contributors?

Simple because by doing that you are adding a barrier of entry and at 
the same time forming a group of elites.

>>   ( those contributors might make up them not meeting the said
>> requirements by pure enthusiasm and the more experience would just help
>> guide that energy into the right places )
> Couldn't they take one of the four seats that doesn't require the
> background?
>
>> Actually after going through an PDR
> Which one?

Actual there where several I went through to see the common denominator 
in them so I could start writing a sample draft for us to start working on.

>> I actually come more to the
>> conclusion that this is more an requirement that we should have and if
>> we do not we should either exercise this clause in my proposal "If there
>> are no candidates available, the existing remaining members of the
>> Server WG will fill the seat by selecting a candidate and approving by
>> majority consensus." and pump the number of server community members to
>> 11 or 13 ( we are going to need all those people anyway. )
> I'm worried that having more people in the group would make it
> unnecessarily challenging to manage and come to consensus on things -
> even to come up with a time slot that everyone could make on a regular
> basis.

PRD are very specific in their nature and function and can only be 
applied to a single product not community of products let alone on a 
community of volunteers.

Applying it to these 3 groups will fail in the same manner as you tried 
to apply it to Red Hat as a company or Fedora in whole as in making a 
single product out of both of these.

And afaik I know the other half and the presiding one required to make 
it work is the MRD which the community should have done first and that 
part has been conveniently left out by the individuals driving this.

> May I ask how, specifically, do you envision having that many
> extra people being helpful - what would they do? What would they bring
> to the group that it would lack otherwise being 9 people?


You need everyone one on board and all hands on deck to have the 
slightest chance of achieving this.

The function of the voting member is more of steering the ship then 
dictate the direction as in ensuring that we get from point a) to point 
b) and stay on course

In the end of the day only thing we actually would need to vote upon ( 
as I see it ) is which server application we make the first product out 
of and that's a vote everyone should be a part of anyway.

>> Now having said that after going through an PDR, an PDR cannot be
>> applied to the server WG since in fact it is the documentation which
>> will be describing the transition process from an server application
>> that we ship to an "product" so as I see it the initial server WG is
>> setting the framework for that as well as pushing 3 products ( to iron
>> out any issue in that process ) through the transition process and
>> through that framework.
>>
>> Ones that has been achieve the role of the server WG will be more
>> selecting which application to choose next and push it through that
>> process.
>>
> I don't follow; can you explain a little bit more what you mean here? I
> don't think the server working group is pushing 3 products; isn't the
> server one of three products? (The three being server, cloud,
> workstation?) Or am I missing a reference here?

You cannot apply PRD to those product again PRD are very specific in 
their nature and function

>> There should be just one election and that's for the server group that
>> will replaces the initial *chosen* WG after that there should not be any
>> other elections that's a burden we do not want in a process like this so
>> we either do as my proposal indicates which is to have each composition
>> group being responsabile for chosing their member to appoint to their
>> respective seat by or the individual stepping down selects another
>> individual to take his place or better yet the remaining members of the
>> WG choose an individual to take that seat.
> In your opinion, is the current composition of the working group is
> temporary and just to set up the framework,

Not in my opinion afaik there is supposed to be election in January in 
every WG to let each group re-elect or replace the initial pointed 
members but maybe I misunderstood something.

>   then there should be a
> one-time election to elect the real working group?

It's left for the relevant sub community to decide they might as well 
appoint someone as I see you need individuals from within those 
community to make PRD work.

> After which point
> there will be no elections but each member would step down at their
> leisure and choose their replacement with the rest of the group's approval?

For the first this Fedora is an community of volunteers so if people 
feel they don't like doing some thing they stop doing it or as you 
phrase it "step down at their leisure" so you will never be able to 
force people to do something they dont want to do and having them 
choosing their replacement within the group that avoids the issue of 
finding a new one. ( Unless the replacement is not approved =

Attempting to apply PRD on a community of volunteers is rather bold move 
and we dont even have proper tools to do PRD and track them and their 
progress properly and so efficiently in the project.

JBG