[cab-discuss] Considering Membership

[Ben Rockwood]

Simon Phipps wrote:

>>> - Of the models I've looked at, the one that I like the best is
>>> OpenOffice.  By this model anyone that wants to be a voting member  can
>>> do so by simply registering and becoming an "Observer" of a given  
>>> project.
>>
>
> I'm afraid I regard that as too low a threshold over at OO.o and it's  
> something I personally believe they will have to change going forward.

Could you please expand on this?  Why is it too low?  Has it caused 
problems?  What have the demonstrated pro's and con's been?

> Another issue to consider is the scope of voting ability. For  
> example, someone who is contributing to the marketing community to  
> its satisfaction should certainly be able to vote about decisions,  
> leadership representation and whatever else is being decided in that  
> community. However, they almost certainly should not have a vote in  
> decisions in the Documentation community unless they have also  
> contributed over there.

This was stipulated in the proposed list.  You can apply to be an 
observer of any community you wish, whether thats 1 or 12.  As an 
observer you'd have the right to vote in each of those communties for 
community isolated votes.  For example, I'd likely be an observer of the 
storage community, docs community, and marketing community.  For votes 
called in those communities I'd be able to cast my ballot, however if a 
vote was called in the Tools community I'd only be able to sit and 
watch.  If a OpenSolaris-wide vote (OGB election for instance) was 
called, reguardless of how many communties I'd was involved with I'd 
still only have a single vote.

The major flaw that is in this model would be the ability for someone to 
become an observer for a community once a ballot was presented, solely 
for the perposes of influencing that community.  This would be entirely 
unacceptable since they have no vested interest in that communities 
future (in a positive way anyway).  Therefore, we would need a lock-out 
period, whereby any observer would need to have become so some period 
before the vote, say 7 days.

In my view the model I'm proposing (just for discussion, not as a "vote 
on this now") is the most open and flexable, however its also open to 
abuse.  How do we prevent someone from becoming an observer of all the 
communities?  Obviously that person is a problem and up to no good. 

> It's also arguable that the "electoral college" for community-wide  
> voting should not necessarily include everyone with a vote in every  
> community. Decisions at the meta-community level almost certainly  
> require a perspective on OpenSolaris that stretches beyond the scope  
> of any single community. It's therefore arguable that voting on  
> issues at the OGB/Community Lead level should only involve Core  
> Developers/Leaders and above. Certainly Apache reserves voting at  
> this level to those elected to "Member" status, which is a peer  
> college level analogous to Ben's Core Developer/Leader level.

I don't believe that an over reliance on this type of represenative 
democracy is required or wise.


As I see it, we're looking at two diffrent ways of running the show:
A) Effiency.  The most efficient method is to have a tiered methodology 
that requires results in exchange for privelege.  This is, as Al once 
put it, "the carrot" model in some sense.  The more you do, the higher 
up the ladder you climb.  All votes and decisions are made by the 
smallest pool of persons possible with the largest possible influence 
and experience.  This makes votes quick, efficient, and wide reaching.  
The persons who cast their votes are also the persons expected to carry 
out the result and therefore more likely to do "the right thing"(tm).
B) Openness.  Giving as much power to as many people as possible and 
thus empowering everyone who desires the ability to be involved whether 
they are productive or not.  Catoring to the lowest common denominator 
has its problems, and complicates votes due to large numbers of voters, 
many of which may be uninformed on what exactly they are voting on and 
what results will impact them in the future, etc.  But "openness" is 
about trusting in the good nature of man and his ability to excercies 
his own judgement, for good or bad, wisely or unwisely.

Glass half empty or half full.  There is, in my opinion, no easy answer 
and definately the sort of problem that you just know you'll feel 
diffrently about down the road when you have that wonderful 20/20 vision 
that history provides.  Thankfully we have a lot of models to rely on 
and gather experience from.

I can't help but avoid raising a point that Keith hates so much: that of 
apperances.  An important thing to consider as we debate these things is 
whether or not we're making decisions based on whats right or what looks 
good.  Obviously we'd rather show off how many voting members we have 
and be able to tell every user that they are empowered by simply being 
interested... but thats not without its problems as I noted above.  I'm 
trying my best to seperate the two and do the good Vulcan thing.  
Personally I prefer to be as open as possible, something that will 
undoubtadly be popular... however, if we encounter large amounts of 
abuse, see projects stalled or held up, and if we don't see a large 
interest in even becoming an observer, then I may very quickly change my 
opinion.

I will say that in looking at projects like GNOME and KDE, I was 
supprised that the voting restrictions were pretty strict.  Most 
projects seem to prefer a system by which you are nominated for 
membership by other members and chosen based on merit.  I'd _think_ that 
this would be very controversial, but apparently its not.  And speaking 
of merit...

I personally believe that there is a big problem with giving voting 
privs to persons based on their contributions.  Its nearly impossible to 
quantify.  Look at persons like Dennis Clarke, Al Hopper, James Dickens, 
myself, and a dozen others... I don't think any of us have code 
contributions (putbacks) to our names, nor documenation contributions in 
any official sense.  Never the less, I don't think anyone would deny us 
voting privs or suggest that we aren't valued and important members of 
the community.  If we are to based privs or status based on 
contributions we need to have some standard by which we judge.  All the 
existing bylaws and constitutions seem intentially vague in this 
reguard.  Telling persons that they should just keep contributing and 
being involved untill "it happens" isn't right, imho, there should be 
some sort of goal or threshold by which people can judge.  Sadly, 
establishing such a goal is extremely difficult, which is why we're all 
left with vaugery and the word "significant" rather than a specific metric.



I think that the options on the table are fairly clear and the most 
important goal at this point in time is to decide which of the two 
positions above (open or effecient) we want to work from, or even to 
decide that there is a better way.  Once we work out that, I think 
things will start falling into place swiftly.


benr.