Membership

[Alexander Sack]

On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 02:53:01PM -0600, David Farning wrote:
> Hey all
> 
> Another request for feedback.
> 
> Before I take another run at the membership document I thought the I
> would flesh out some of my thought and get your feedback.
> 
> I am not thinking of the member requirements as arbitrary hoops that
> people jump through before joining--just to keep Mozillateam elite.
> 
> Rather I am thinking of them as a level of quality assurance.

Ack. And in the end, people can always contribute even without being
mozillateam members. There are currently no technically enforced
privileges attached to be in team list (though this might change in
future - e.g. privileges to upload to preview archives). So people can
do almost any job without being added to the team list.

> 
> At this point we are pretty small.  Based on what I have seen lately, we
> are going to grow quite well. Currently, Asac (or whoever the lead
> developer is at the time) can interact with everyone.  As time goes on
> and we have more members, the lead developers time and interactions will
> be more limited.
> 
> Many of the packages we are working with are very visible in Ubuntu.  As
> such, I would like to insure that the quality is as high as possible.  I
> am thinking of members as trusted lieutenants who have proved
> themselves.
> 
> Every time I talk to anyone outside of the team, I have to spend a fair
> amount of time proving to them that I am not talking out of my rear end.
> I would like to establish a team reputaion were any member ccan talk and
> be reconized as speaking on behalf of the team.

In general, I agree on the points above.

But I just want to remember that speaking on behalf of the team is
always a dangerous thing to do and needs extra care.

Usually just say its your personal opinion as a team member. If you
are confident that other will agree you could even state so ... but if
they don't then it's you who has the loss of face :).

For the merits and image of the team, I would say that things will
evolve based on what we achieve. If we manage to provide high quality
software with top-support for end-users and downstream distributors
combined with a good upstream work, then things will work out as
expected. If we fail ... 

 - Alexander