EPEL Steering Committee
General
Originally an EPEL Steering Committee was formed by FESCo as a governing body for EPEL. This committee consisted of seven members
An EPEL Steering Committee was formed by FESCo as a governing body for EPEL. The committee consist of seven members -- the initial one was filled with the first seven EPEL SIG members who were also those who invested most of the time and work for the EPEL idea in the beginning. In late 2014, the committee was revived to have 5 members who came from CentOS and Fedora areas.
Currently these people are members of the EPEL Steering Committee:
- Dennis Gilmore ( ausil)
- Kevin Fenzi ( nirik )
- Jim Perrin (jperrin)
- Brian Stinson (bstinson)
- Stephen J Smoogen ( smooge ) (Chair) end of service 2015-04-17.
The EPEL Steering Committee tries to work in the open and doesn't want to use it's influence as governing body. That means:
- if you want to do something "new" in EPEL-land just tell the others about it on the mailing list about it. If nobody yells for a few days consider you plans accepted and go ahead
- Topics in EPEL-land are discussed and decided in open-to-all IRC meetings and on the mailing lists; all EPEL contributers can send in their vote ot their options via mail if they cannot make the meeting.
- Important topics are discussed on the list (epel-devel@lists.fedoraproject.org) before they being voted upon. The goal is to find a consensus that seems to works for the majority of people involved.
- Meeting summaries are sent to the meeting list, epel-devel and epel-users lists.
- Decisions made by the EPEL steering committee may be re-discussed in FESCo meetings, if necessary. FESCo retains authority over EPEL decisions and can exercise a veto on a voted-upon topic. FESCo can exercise this veto in the FESCo meeting that follows the release of the public summary that included the decision under veto. FESCo is guaranteed at least 24 hours for research, deliberation, and discussion, regardless of meeting schedules. This procedure is similar to the interaction between FESCo and the Packaging Committee.
- Each point that receives strong opposition on the list after it got decided will get revisited once in the next meeting if someone asks for it
- if it comes to hard decisions where no agreement can be found only the votes from the steering committee members count; for an item under vote to gain approval, a minimum of four members must agree on it to form a consensus. If that can't be reached (contentious votes where people are abstaining can create such situations) then all Steering Committee members have to vote and then the majority of votes wins. The goal is to have a consensus between Committee members; sometimes that isn't possible.
The EPEL Steering Committee does not handle issues around theoretical Packaging, for example, everything around writing specfiles. This is the purview of the Packaging Committee to manage. On the other hand, practical packaging, for example, maintenance and update policy for EPEL, is regulated by the EPEL Steering Committee.
The goal is to let the EPEL Steering Committee work on it's own, that is, without FESCo involvement, for all things that are specific to EPEL. Sometimes it might be necessary to solve issues hand-in-hand with FESCo or other SIGs, for example, resolving conflicts between EPEL and the Packaging Committee.
General discussions occur on-list before voting. However, large-scale and controversial topics require extra care. To make sure all steering committee, SIG, and community members have time to provide their voice on a topic, scheduled votes on such topics are announced 24-hours in advance of the vote. Small items may be brought to vote in a meeting or on-list without a prior announcement; this keeps the project moving swiftly without needless bureaucracy. Decisions may always be revisited, if there is a need to.
Steering Committee Chair
The EPEL Steering Committee is conducted by the Steering Committee Chairmen. The chair's responsibilities are:
- Keep the pieces together
- Prepare and run the SIG meetings
- Issue and coordinate the votings in the meetings and in the wiki, to prevent chaos that might arise if anybody would issue votings
- Write the meeting and general "what happened" summaries, then send the to the list and FESCo for discussion
- Report to FESCo, try to be available for questions in FESCo meetings and on the lists
- Make sure all requests on the mailing lists regarding EPEL feel heard
- Make sure EPEL is running fine, which includes "make contributors and users happy"
Note that the chair doesn't have to do all of the above personally. The chair is responsible for making sure someone does these roles. ;-)