Phil Steitz wrote:
Craig R. McClanahan wrote:
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I don't think that effective decision-making in a large organization *requires* bureacracy.
You're right. It requires responsibility.
It's possible that an entity is responsible of something without having bureacracy in place. In Apache it's mainly meritocratic communities that decide through the Apache decision-making process (not necessarily voting). Here it seems that it's not clear who is ultimately responsible for this, or if there is lack of oversight, but I might be wrong.
I don't quite understand. Isn't the ASF Board ultimately responsible? I would view that responsibility, however, as procedural/legal in the day-to-day decision-making process (i.e., making sure that charters, legal oblitions, etc. are adhered to).
Maybe I am way off base here, but I see the whole community as responsible. The Board and PMCs (relatively stable "authorities") have to exist for legal reasons and to make program-level decisions (including how charters are defined and how community decision-making works); but the responsibility for day to day decisions (such as how to distribute the newsletter) belongs with the community -- especially those who are stepping up to do the work.
I know that it may be naive to assume that the "community" can effectively decide everything and that the discussion/voting process will always lead to consensus. I have seen a few situations where this has failed; but I don't see pushing decisions off to "responsible parties" or "ultimate authoriteies" as any better than letting individuals *take* responsibility and defend their ideas and actions among the community.
Phil
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