Principia / DevOps / leadership and governance

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Matthew East's message of Sun May 29 01:11:25 -0700 2011:
> On 27 May 2011 18:04, Mark Shuttleworth <mark at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > Right now, this is all embryonic, so I don't want to create a large group.
> > But I do want us to signal (a) that this is part of Ubuntu, and (b) who to
> > go to for resolution of technical and social issues related to Principia and
> > Ensemble. So I think we should create a Principia Council, with a chair,
> > appointed by the CC.
> 
> My concern would be that it is unusual to create a council before an
> established community is in place. We have traditionally looked for a
> community to evolve, set in place some established procedures, and
> grow to a decent level before appointing a council. I think that the
> reason we have done this traditionally is because a community in its
> earlier stages deserves more hands on attention from the CC and TB
> before governance is delegated to a body which arises out of that
> community. It gives a chance for the community to settle in and for
> the candidates for a governance board to become known by the team
> which ultimately will appoint and report to them, which I think is
> important. It's also because until a particular team has grown to a
> significant level, the need for a council for delegating governance
> issues to doesn't arise.

Hi Matthew. 

I believe By granting the Principia council some basic ability to help
our contributors integrate themselves into Ubuntu, we can make sure to
not draw any lines between the projects, asserting that they are in fact
one. Meanwhile, this still allows Principia to operate mostly de-coupled
from the much larger scale governance structure of Ubuntu.

> 
> If this is to be a part of the Ubuntu community rather than a separate
> or upstream project (that part is not clear to me, although Mark you
> obviously see it that way), I'd like to see the community take shape
> first, under the more direct auspices of the CC for governance issues
> and the TB for technical issues, and a council appointed later once
> the community is up and running.
> 

To offer another perspective, it would probably be good for Ubuntu if
the Principia community takes the shape of a circle of friends from the
very beginning, and it will undoubtedly be good for Principia.