Xubuntu (Council) future

[Pasi Lallinaho]

Hello,

I'm sorry but I couldn't make the meeting last night. Let's continue the 
council discussion on the mailing list.

For non-team-members, here's what I wrote earlier in a team exclusive 
e-mail:

> While I've been relatively inactive for some time, I've had this 
> feeling that we are approaching another turning point where the 
> community seriously needs to reassess the situation and create a plan 
> going forward. Getting no nominations for the council verifies my 
> thoughts.
>
> While change often comes with uncomfort, fear not!
>
> The last time we discussed about existential issues, our main trouble 
> was Xfce being inactive. Back then, the team decided to channel forces 
> to bringing Xfce back to life so Xubuntu could also stay alive. And 
> see how well Xfce is doing now! (In a way, I feel like the focus is 
> still on Xfce and might continue to be for the unforeseen future for 
> some of us.)

In the brief discussion about the council in the meeting, these two 
interlapping things were brought up:
- "What have the Romans ever done for us" (I mean, the council...)
- "Maybe a time to consider switching back to the XPL model"

The main reason why the council was set up, and the main thing it did 
for us (more in the psychological way than actually) was to spread the 
administration burden. When a single person is the project lead, he is 
seen as the person who is responsible for the project, both from outside 
and inside.

 From outside, you are the official contact point for the project. From 
inside, you are the person who everybody turns to when they have an 
issue, there is any dispute or simply a decision to be made.

While one can look after the project lead tasks very loosely or very 
pedantically, it can be mentally taxing when you are expected to keeping 
up with all matters related to the project. This includes checking email 
weekly if not daily to make sure everything is rolling smoothly. This 
can get especially nasty during the last weeks of the release cycle, 
especially with LTS releases as a lot more is at stake.

In case you are committed to your task, you might have several 
project-wide projects ongoing. These are often infra and community 
related, and those are often also the hardest ones to deal with.

Ultimately, this is not *fun*. You want to do it, because you want the 
best for the project, but it's unlikely enjoyable most days.


If we want to go forward as close to the current situation as possible 
socially, we could make the team essentially work as the council.

This would spread the burden more evenly amongst people and would remove 
the in some ways useless body. However, keeping a team membership would 
(should) require more active involvement than it does now. As a 
downside, we would still likely need a single project lead-like contact 
point.


Cheers,
Pasi

--
Pasi Lallinaho (knome)         › https://open.knome.fi/
Xubuntu contributor            › https://xubuntu.org/
Xfce contributor               › https://xfce.org/
Shimmer Project co-founder     › https://shimmerproject.org/