RFC: FESCo Future

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 13:12 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 25.04.2006, 12:48 +0200 schrieb Neil Thompson:
> > On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 04:55:30PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > ATM, I am just asking questions to clarify things. Unfortunately, I
> > > sense no indication of democracy.
> > You say that as though it's a bad thing - let a million flies vote and you'll
> > end up with crap all over the place.
> > 
> > I become less and less convinced every year that democracy works in the free
> > software world - you tend to end up with people who are so focussed on maintaining
> > their popularity that they can't make the hard decisions - either that or marketroids
> > who start impacting on the technical side of the project.
> 
> That's a risk I fear, too.
There are many shades between black and white, i.e. between
dictatorship, absolutistic monachy on one hand and a basis democracy,
voting on every small detail every second day.

The key is: representative democracy.

It's what most Western countries apply. You elect your representative
for a limited time, he decides on his own during his election period,
etc.

Another directorship model would be a two chamber model, similar to what
most democracies and even many companies apply (supervisor board, board
of directors).

Typically one of these chambers will be seated with delegates (e.g. one
1/3 RH, 1/3 FE packagers, 1/3 FESCO), while the other chamber would be
elected by the "masses".

>  That's one of the reasons why I'd like to see
> self nominations with a detailed "mission statement" and a section "
> things I plan to drive forward when elected for FESCo".
My point is: I sense not a single trace of democracy at RH and I sense
not a trace of supervision/monitoring/control of the community over the
boards inaugurated by RH.

Some examples:
* RH has killed the FF, without even informing the community in advance.
(Now some projects are complaining about lack of funding - Could it be
RH missed the aspect of using a "foundation as means of fundraising?)

* RH has proclaimed the FPB and has inaugurated the persons at their own
will without consulting nor informing the community. They selecting a
person as head we never saw in any Fedora Project before nor without
thinking about this organs interaction with other Fedora Projects.
(In politics such an incident would be called "palace revolution")

...

Even an enlightened absolutistic government behaves different.

Ralf