leadership document

Karl Anliot kanliot at gmail.com
Sun May 20 11:39:27 UTC 2012


On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 6:17 PM, Jared Norris <jrnorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20 May 2012 02:28, Karl Anliot <kanliot at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 1:13 PM, Ryan Porter
>> <websterhamster at felton4h.net> wrote:
>>> As I can't participate in the meeting (IRC is bloked by my parents), I
>>> would like to vote here to follow the meritocratic governance structure
>>> described at http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/debianleader.xml .
>>>
>>
>> Allow me to point out, that in a meritocracy, only council members, or
>> comitters (who have been approved by the council) get to vote.
>>
>>
>> This is a long read, so be prepared.  Thanks to OSS Watch for
>> providing a tutorial on how to write a governance document.  It
>> formalizes the idea of "Elected Team Leaders" we've been tossing
>> around on the mailing list.  I've made an effort to make it complete
>> enough to vote on.
>>
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/tempgovernance
>>
>> --
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>
> I will also most likely miss the meeting due to time zone issues.
> Instead I thought I should probably add some information on the list
> for people to take into consideration. Firstly, I understand those
> that are doing the work should have the most say in anything and I
> haven't been overly active myself in the team in recent times. That
> being said I have seen open source teams go through change like the
> Lubuntu team currently is so I don't want them to make the same
> mistakes so hoping to give some constructive feedback.
>
> Firstly, thanks Karl for taking the time to prepare the document. It
> raises some good points for discussion and we need to start that
> discussion somewhere.
>
> The problem I see with the proposal as mentioned on the wiki above
> (which incidentally should be on wiki.ubuntu.com, not help.ubuntu.com)
> is that it appears to essentially double the work of the existing
> teams in Ubuntu. Ubuntu itself is a large community team and therefore
> has more contributors than any one single project in Ubuntu (I see
> Lubuntu as a Ubuntu team, I think this is a fair comment). As a
> smaller team I think we should be utilising the existing structure of
> Ubuntu for our needs as much as possible. To completely separate
> ourselves like is proposed in the governance document will create an
> enormous amount of bureaucracy and work for those involved with no
> real tangible benefits to the Lubuntu community. I personally would
> like to see as much work getting done on the project instead of just
> trying to keep the project running.
>
> I could perhaps see benefit in organising team liaisons with the
> already existing Ubuntu teams but to create whole separate other teams
> to me seems a bit daunting and as we've proven over the last few
> months there really isn't the number of contributors required to keep
> such a number of sub teams afloat. If we had hundreds of contributors
> working on the project we probably would need a system as complex as
> the one described. Unfortunately, the Lubuntu list of active
> contributors is not that large.
>
> As far as electing governance bodies, don't we already have the means
> to do this? As far as I'm aware anyone contributing significantly and
> sustained amounts is already eligible for Ubuntu Membership, so why
> not make voting rights simply those that are Ubuntu Members as well as
> being in the Lubuntu team? As far as what to vote on, I don't know
> what we're really expecting these elected officials to decide for us.
> Most real decisions on Lubuntu itself should be done on Launchpad via
> the existing bug system or via consensus on the mailing list. In my
> opinion, any other issues should be taken to the relevant Ubuntu team
> for guidance (e.g. for a documentation question, as the Ubuntu Docs
> team, for a QA question, as the Ubuntu QA team, etc.). So really,
> other than consensus there shouldn't a lot of tie breaking to be done
> by elected people, and if required, the elected people could be the
> ones that already exist in the Ubuntu governance boards and councils.
>
> The positions I see as requirements are:
> * Chairperson/s - responsible for ensuring meetings are organised,
> chaired and documented afterwards. They don't have to do this all
> themselves but they need to make arrangements to ensure they occur.
> * Team reporter - responsible for ensuring Team Reports are completed
> on time and complete. Again, these don't have to be done all by one or
> two people but someone needs to be responsible for ensuring they
> occur. If you're not sure what a team report is then the wiki page is
> available - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports
>
> In my opinion everything else is really just a position for the sake
> of having positions. At the end of the day those that are doing will
> still continue to do, those that aren't are free to join in and do.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Jared Norris JP(Qual) BBehSc(Psych)
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JaredNorris

I'm intrigued by the Team Reporter, you mention.  It sounds like a
responsible position.  IMHO, there's not any difference between Team
reporters, and team leaders.  Really Team leaders sound better,
because it emphasizes leadership, and "reporters" emphasizes
reporting.

Your criticism of Lubuntu and Ubuntu shouldn't be different is also
valid.  As a counter-argument I must point out that Ubuntu has a
governance document (so we should also)

I'm sorry the document is so long and complex.  It really is
intimidating.  But looking at the ideas in your email, you mention
elections... And the document does take that idea and  try to
formalize it.   I'm asking for improvements. :)

thanks,
kanliot



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