DMB: Proposal for a different review process

[Michael Bienia]

On 2011-08-04 15:42:38 -0400, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> On 04/08/11 02:13 PM, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> > To (1), there's been discussion on the list about adjusting meeting
> > times to improve quorum.  That would be a huge win for everyone.
> > Woohoo.  \o/
> 
> Yep, timing seems to be an issue in some boards. Especially the DMB.

The RMBs have an advantage in the timezone issue compared to the DMB as
they only have to cover a few (related) timezones and it's easier to
find a meeting time which works well for all members (and the
applicants).
The DMB consists of seven people spread around the world: east coast of
the US, Europe and Japan. Which in itself is good to have representives
from the around the world but makes finding meeting times where we can
reach at least quorum a hard task and also suites the applicants (luckily
we don't have members from even more spread timezones).
There were proposal how to solve the time issue but IMHO they all have a
drawback that they don't guarantee a timely processing of an
application (if you don't have to reply right now there is a high chance
that an important task slips in and moves processing an application down
your work queue). I didn't yet seen a proposal which address both
issues. An idea might be to split the DMB into RDMBs but there aren't
enough applications to warrant that.

[...]
> In the Ask Mark session at the UDS in Budapest I asked him for a
> canonical answer on the matter. He confirmed that in no way should we
> weigh employment by Canonical negatively or positively. And that's how
> everyone should vote. If you're not doing that, then you're not doing
> your job as membership board right. Sure, if you disagree with it you
> can take it up with the CC, but it's policy and as a membership board
> member people should accept that they can't just make up random rules
> about membership during meetings.

That should also apply the other way: the applicants and also their
supporters should accept the current rules and don't try to change them
during a meeting.

If there is a need to discuss the current policies than it should be
done in the right place and not during meetings. It's really time to
discuss them in regard to current Canonical projects and adapt the
policies if needed. Many policies are still from the time where only
Ubuntu (the distribution and their derivatives) existed and LP was still
closed source. This has changed over time (LP is open source, Canonical
funds several projects) but I don't remember that the policies got
updated (or at least discussed).

Michael