The feedback on this approach seems to be positive. I will start a new
thread for proposed PMC lists and a second for discussion.
I will leave the proposals thread open for the entire week, and collect
up the results and summarize next Monday.
Andrew
On 9/15/2012 3:08 PM, Andrea Pescetti wrote:
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.
