Meeting Minutes online 2012-05-16 (was: Re: Meeting tonight?)

[Jared Norris]

> I must point out, that gilir was our governance.  And he left last
> week, after some heat from phillw.  Also, because we are in
> competition with other Linux distros, user opinions do count.  They
> might be more relevant than technical decisions made for "all the
> right reasons"

User opinions DO count, but popularity contests don't. There is a
subtle different. The reason the technical people appear to have more
of a say is that they are the ones best placed to make decisions that
are aligned with the goals of the distribution.

> You say that casting votes can't be regarded as a decision for the
> project?  What can be?
> I noticed you had a sucess with Lubuntu Software Center.  How was that
> handled?  Can it be repeated?

Without searching the back history of the mailing list the Lubuntu
Software Centre was one user who saw a need and created something.
When it started becoming more mature they engaged the community to
make sure there was nothing obvious missing and then spoke to the
relevant Lubuntu development people to get it in to Lubuntu. This can
definitely be repeated, as they say all around the open source world
"patches welcome".

> Anyhow I've been fighting with you Mario, B. mainly because it was
> never clear what the "core contributors" wanted.  It's great for
> Rafael to get his "Lubuntu Blog" on our new website, but how did that
> happen?

I can't answer on this one, I've never had much to do with the
website. I do know that the Ubuntu Planet has set requirements to
fulfill to be on that blogroll, maybe we can come up with a list of
requirements for the Lubuntu one? For comparison's sake, Ubuntu's
requirements are at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PlanetUbuntu I know our
LoCo refers to that as a guide for our LoCo planet as well.

> Anyhow, I've realized that a voting model is probably too radical for
> Lubuntu.  So, I'm going to hold it back for more development.  Please
> don't let the uncertainty in the process hamper your decision making.
> That would be ironic.
>
> kanliot

The voting model isn't radical, most open source communities use this
and to be honest, from what I've seen, Lubuntu does as well. In my
experience in the open source world is that all code contributors have
a say in how the project is developed. The problem Lubuntu has, is
that there are so few code contributors it doesn't always seem this
way. Lubuntu doesn't have an army of code monkeys sitting in the
basement where we can call upon them to make changes as we see fit. To
be honest I'm quite pleasantly surprised at how awesome our
development team is able to keep up with what they currently do. Job
well done I say.

I and others may not 100% agree with your notes but at least they're a
start. I personally think we all need to brainstorm what we actually
want from our governance before we start trying to get people to
perform uncertain roles. When we have clear definitions of what we
want from roles then we can move forward to work out the best way to
select them from the team.


-- 
Regards,

Jared Norris JP(Qual) BBehSc(Psych)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JaredNorris