Re: Candidacy: Ryan Lortie

[john palmieri <john j5 palmieri gmail com>]

I appreciate that we are talking about the technical board as an "open
question" but I fear it could be used as a political tool to override
the decision making process that already exists in the meritocracy.
By giving a board this power you basically allow people who may not
even be active in various projects to decide what is best for that
project.  The great things about the one "technical board" we already
have - the release team - is that people can come and go based on
their willingness to put in time and effort. There is no formal
process to becoming a member and the members govern basically like any
other FOSS project.  Their criteria for including a technology in the
module sets defers to the what the community is currently using.
Their only power is to formally compile the lists of what the
community has already decided.

If we start electing people to make these technical decisions we run
the risk of giving powers of selection to those who may not be
qualified to make those calls.  Further more, removing such people in
a timely manner would be subject to bylaws and could become a source
of distraction.  Major power needs to stay in the hands of those who
are doing the work in the community, not those who can come up with
some wedge issue to get elected.

I suspect some people think the Foundation Board is some sort of all
powerful entity that has the ability to make major decisions with
little oversite.  The truth is, it has a very limited scope of powers.
 It controls the budget so can approve or disapprove use of resources
for some technical matters such as hackfests (though I am not aware of
any hackfests that have been rejected).  It is also highly respected
in the community and as such can bring up issues such as creating a
technical board without being shouted down. Most of the board's work
is actually quite mundane - making sure we are in compliance with
laws, handing issues that can't become public for various reasons,
precuring insurance for events, writing up press releases, liaisoning
with industry, etc.

With that said, it does have one power that we need to watch out for -
bringing up votes to create groups that have more power than the board
it self.  It goes without saying, please think carefully about this
direction.  While I applaud a new board that wants to expand the
effectiveness of the formal structures within the Foundation, it needs
to be tempered with humility and wisdom, and not forget that the
community is ultimately where direction needs to be set.

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Ryan Lortie <desrt desrt ca> wrote:
> hi Philip,
>
> (keeping in mind that creating a technical board is very much an open
> question)
>
> On Mon, 2011-05-23 at 19:48 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
>> - Will all foundation members get a single vote?
>
> That was indeed my intention.
>
> I think your other proposals are too difficult to implement and possibly
> even undesirable.  Do you have some others ideas about how it might be
> possible?
>
> Cheers
>
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