[ubuntu-in] The Community Stucture

[Baishampayan Ghose]

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Vidya,
> As an Ubuntu volunteer who was involved in the formation of the 
> IN-team, I regret to say that this Team Structure was formed without 
> my knowledge or involvement. If the meetings were conducted on IRC 
> there was no email to this mailing list informing everyone of the 
> timings and date of the said meeting for aforementioned purpose. So I
>  request that logs of the said IRC chat be made available publicly.
No meeting on IRC was held wrt this Community structure. As you might
have noted, the draft proposal was posted on the list quite a few days
back for peer review. We know that not all people can be available on
IRC, that's why it was posted on the list. You could have taken part in
the drafting process very easily by just replying to the list when it
was posted.

> After going through the wiki draft, here are my observations :
That's great. I am replying incline.


> [0] Clause#3 of Functions of the Council arbitrarily grants the 
> council the right to assign and remove any Community volunteer from 
> any responsibility, as it deems fit. This does seem detrimental to 
> the *free* spirit that the Ubuntu community as a whole functions 
> under. To the best of my knowledge, even the CC and Ubuntu members 
> don't remove people without proof and assigning valid reasons.
There is no clause which says about ``removal'' of a community
volunteer. And even if it's done, it will be done transparently after
meeting on IRC and discussing on the list. We are here to take forward
this project and fulfil our goals, not to form a cabal. I agree that the
draft says nothing about this removal issue. We will add this extra
clause which will say that the CC won't remove anybody arbitrarily
without discussing with the community members and without assigning
valid reasons.

> [1] Redressal clause - There is no mention of this in the wiki draft.
>  In the event that any IN-volunteer has grievances how would the 
> IN-Council Members solve the same. Would redressal avenues be open to
>  all or restricted to Council Members and Admins.
What kind of grievances are you talking about? What can possibly be the
grievance of a project member? I have no idea what are you talking
about. Kindly provide some examples to clarify.

> [2] Post of Council Member and Administrators - I propose a clause 
> that a single person should not hold both posts. They should be 
> mutually exclusive, otherwise it will be a conflict of interest 
> (hence denial of justice) in the event of a disagreement between a 
> volunteer and a Member holding both Council and Admin posts.
Admins will only be responsible for the servers and the lists. I don't
know how there will be a conflict of interest here as all members of the
Ubuntu Technical Board are also admins of the repos and even a few
members of the Ubuntu CC are core-developers and thus admins.
Furthermore, the admin job can't be given to anybody since there is a
matter of trust & competence involved here.

> [3] Election of Council Members : New Ubuntu volunteers should be 
> given a chance to participate in the IN-team, hence Admin posts 
> should not be renewed consecutively, instead a fresh team should take
>  charge with open polls for posts.
Ubuntu volunteers are 100% allowed to participate. In fact, Ubuntu
members are automatically elected into the Council. Admin posts will not
be renewed all the time. We will assign admin jobs to new people from
the Council as and when required.

> [4] Policy formation : To ensure transparency, the names of all the 
> IN-team people involved in policy formation should be clearly 
> mentioned. All IRC discussions should be made public as it is done in
>  Ubuntu proper. If this is already being done, the URL where logs can
>  be accessed should be prominently displayed.
Yes, they will be. Once the structure is in place all the meeting logs
will be put up somewhere and as far as the policy formation is
concerned, I don't think it's necessary since the very facts that it has
been accepted by all and that it has been peer reviewed, also means that
the whole community was involved in the drafting process. Correct me if
I am wrong.

> I request these be clarified on this mailing list since it is 
> transparent and documented as opposed to IRC and will ensure greater 
> heights for the IN-Ubuntu Team.
I agree. Done. Thanks a lot for asking the questions. :)
Regards,
BG

- --
Baishampayan Ghose <b.ghose at ubuntu.com>
Ubuntu -- Linux for Human Beings
http://www.ubuntu.com/

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