I wanted to kick off a conversation about what is a governance model, and to whom it would apply.
A governance model would apply to all of the people who are part of the GNU Project, and so discussing these two points makes sense to me. I look forward to any feedback about this. What is a governance model? A governance model should provide: * Organization and structure. * Includes establishing authority. * Define roles and responsibilities. * Help people answer questions like: * "Why are we doing this?" * "Who needs to know about this?" * "Who is responsible for this?" * Create a feedback loop within the model to allow changes over time. What benefits does a governance model provide? * Clearly defined roles make it easier to get stuff done. * Coordination is improved between various parts of the project. * Effectiveness improved since responsibilities clearly spell out who needs to know things. Next, who is a part of the GNU Project? It's fairly straight forward to say the following people are part of the GNU Project: * GNU Maintainers (as seen in the 'maintainers' file). This is a narrow view though and leaves out a lot of really important people: * People working on advocacy and policy. * Developers working on GNU packages (bug submission, triage, wiki gardening etc.) * Anyone supporting the GNU Project directly with non-developer roles. * IT admins, project management, release managers, package review, mentoring/coaching. ... basically anyone involved in the day-to-day running of the GNU Project. Governance should extend to all of the people in the community via the defined roles and responsibilities. In summary: - Governance provides clearly defined roles, makes it easier to coordinate, and grow an organization. - A governance model brings benefits to all the GNU Project. Cheers, Carlos. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
