On 07/09/2012 Andrew Rist wrote:
While on one hand I understand why so many of us want to be on the PMC,
a large PMC is not necessarily in the best interest of the project. The
PMC should not be making decisions about the direction of the project
and on who gets to do what - the PMC should be mostly involved with
voting in new committers and approving releases. The direction of the
project should be determined on ooo-dev
Since comments to the latest report, forwarded here by Rob, support the
idea that we are approaching graduation, it is probably time to agree on
at least our vision of the PMC.
By now, everybody knows that the PMC:
- Votes in new committers and PMC members. This indeed requires that it
represents all key areas of the project, to be able to evaluate all
contributions.
- Has a private mailing list to be used for the aforementioned votes,
for discussions involving trademarks and, ideally, nothing else.
- Has binding votes on releases and decides the release strategy.
- Satisfies the other generic guidelines stated in
http://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/pmcs.html (a draft, but the
best source as suggested by our mentors)
But the PMC must also serve, in a form we have to agree upon, as
governing body for the project: it is true that the direction of the
project must be determined on ooo-dev, and probably most of the times
consensus will be enough, but it might happen that a few rare decisions
need a vote on ooo-dev, and in that case everyone is entitled to vote
but only the PMC votes are binding. If sharp contrasts emerge, the PMC
will likely try to mediate, but still the privilege that its votes are
binding should be supported by evidence that the PMC members have the
trust of the OpenOffice community.
The current PPMC, especially due to the bootstrapping phase that allowed
a large number of "initial committers" to enter the project without
demonstrating merit, can't be considered as having the trust of the
community.
My Proposal for the next step in the PMC selection process:
I suggest that each of us provide up to 10 names for the PMC. no
spreadsheet - no voting - no '-1s' for now. Just an affirmative list of
the 10 people you think should be doing the work of the PMC. ...
We can use this to produce the next pass at the proposed PMC
roster, hopefully a PMC of around 20 members.
This is a nice idea since it would guarantee that every PMC member is,
directly or indirectly, trusted by the community, while still
maintaining a manageable size for the PMC.
Of course, if we choose this way, then most of the current PPMC members
won't be in the PMC; so it's important to guarantee that all volunteers
can have a say in determining the future of the project; for example,
the PMC would be committed to seeking consensus on ooo-dev rather than
enforcing choices by using its binding votes. And the "rotation" idea
from Rob makes sense too, if it can be implemented easily and with
little impact on the project's governance continuity.
Regards,
Andrea.
