FESCo critique (was: Re: [Bug 178162] Review Request: libgeotiff)

[Josh Boyer]

On Tue, 2006-10-31 at 12:40 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:17:54 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> 
> > > Do remember that with
> > > the last FESCo "election" primarily we just filled vacant seats in a very
> > > half-hearted and controversial way.
> > 
> > I'm looking forward for the next election and your detailed suggestions
> > what do to better.
> 
> This sounds as if you cannot think of any improvements yourself and as if
> you just want somebody else to do the work.

Or it sounds as if we think what we have in place is fine, so we'd like
to hear what you find lacking.

> Food for thought: Self-nominees who had less than 50% of the possible
> number of votes were able to enter FESCo. So, even if the majority of
> contributors did not vote for them, they were able to join FESCo. It was
> impossible to vote "against" somebody by not voting for him.

I'd like to personally state that if the community thinks that I as a
FESCo member am not doing a good job for Extras, then they only need to
speak up.  Should a large majority call for me to step down, I would do
so willingly.  Just my personal thought on that.

> > > Before the next election a lot must
> > > happen. The FE developer community needs means to measure whether they are
> > > happy with the elected representatives. That is not possible when FESCo's
> > > decision-finding process is not documented, when some FESCo members either
> > > abstain from voting often or always [or because they are absent from a
> > > high number of public meetings], and when this leads to sort of anonymous
> > > FESCo decisions (where only with high effort or luck you find nothing more
> > > than a few +1/-1 votes in meeting-minutes).
> > 
> > As I said: If you think something needs to change propose a scheme.
> 
> And you will reject it if you think it creates work and if nobody is
> willing to do that work.

If it is truly beneficial then it becomes important enough for someone
to do the work.  And that person doesn't have to be in FESCo for a large
majority of things.

> For many decisions, FESCo's +1/-1 style votings are not even needed.
> They just add overhead.

Example?

> But when FESCo is really needed to decide on something, I'd like the
> official decision to be documented clearly more like this
> 
>   Summary of the proposal: [...]
>   Pro: 10/13
>   Contra: 2/13 (thl, jwb)
>   Absent: 1/13 (awjb)
> 
> plus a summary of how exactly thl and jwb disagreed.
> 
> And the whole thing announced via e-mail or on a separate "FESCo
> Announcements" page. It is most interesting to learn what _community
> representatives_ within FESCo think.

I find this to be a good suggestion.  The information is all in the
meeting logs already, but one has to read the whole log to find it.  A
summary like you describe would be quite nice.

> 
> What of
> 
>   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SteeringCommittee/Meetings
> 
> is still relevant? As a new contributor, how could I learn about past
> FESCo decisions and the decision of the individual members?

I'm not sure what you mean.  Those are the meeting logs.  They are all
relevant to the history of FESCo...

Current items can be found here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/Schedule

and closed items can be found here:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/Schedule/ClosedIssues

josh