User:Toshio/Flock2014 Governance discussion

Brainstorming Agenda Items

Add anything you think might be good to discuss to the list. After a few weeks, number80 and toshio will try to organize and prioritize it for discussion at flock.

• figure out what the difference in responsibility is between vote-elected bodies and non-elected bodies
• How do we want central direction for fedora to actually work with diverging products?
• merge fesco and board
• in case we merge the fesco and the board, how do we ensure that non-technical contributors gets represented in the new governance body (HG)
• it would be useful to have a map of sorts of the current structure of all of the boards, committees, working groups, subprojects, teams, and sigs in Fedora. (Brainstorm this?)
• "Fedora Council" proposal

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Josh Boyer's proposal on a representative council to replace the current board structure: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/board-discuss/2013-September/012119.html

• I like the idea of a representative council especially because it ensures a community voice that better mirrors the meritocracy we try to uphold. People who lead e.g. Docs group elevate their own leadership, who represents on this council. Not sure whether this council needs to precisely mirror the same membership as the release readiness meeting. That would run the risk of devolving high level discussions into technical ones (which is easy for majority engineering/technical groups). Here's a slight change/enhancement to the proposal: The group should be appointed by the FPL with some number of seats reserved for people leading in various teams and/or committees around Fedora. These would ensure a portion of (more) meritocratic membership. Then some other seats might be reserved for people who can represent and/or contribute ideas from the perspective of community growth, diversity, finance, or other concerns. pfrields (talk) 15:43, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

I made some notes on some leadership areas that I see as part of the board's roles, and I'll list them as a starting point.... hopefully that will be helpful. --Mattdm (talk) 09:22, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

• "Supreme Court of Fedora Values" -- When there are questions about how some activity in the product might relate to the Fedora Foundations, the board is there to make the final decision. A more activist version of this might be that when something seems to be off course, the board steps in.

• Legal and Trademark approval, including that for new Spins. I see some open tickets that might relate to this.

• Structure of the Project. This is one of the things that's pretty clearly laid out in the wiki pages about Fedora's governance.
  • Definition of subprojects, and recognizing which ones are active. (As I look at the left column of the wiki, this is clearly not happening.)
  • Support and oversight of subprojects that aren't under FESCo. (Or FAmSco?)
  • Elections. This is another problem area, I think, although that may just be symptomatic.

• Strategic planning and leadership. How can we collectively help set direction for the project and line up resources for implementation? How can we encourage community collaboration towards those common goals?
  • Note that this does not imply a "command and control" structure. There is a need, though, to look at where the community is going and where it wants to go, and to help make a cohesive map. This will help us identify areas where there might be obstacles (so we can do what we can to remove them), and possibly areas where we need to allocate resources (directly in some cases, indirectly in others).

• Finances and budget -- possibility for more direct responsibility over Fedora community budget