[CHAOSS] How decisions are made (was: Opening discussion on using Discourse Forum for CHAOSS)

[dmg]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 10:31 AM Emma Irwin <eirwin at mozilla.com> wrote:
>
> Documentation of who makes decisions, their role(s), and the process they follow is half the battle to gaining trust, and increased participation in decision-making.   Most of the time people are not interested in challenging, but they do want to be consulted.  This is a great talk from Rust on that topic.
>
>
> Suggest never saying 'that's how most open source projects' do things, when referencing governance discussions.

I suggest you go count the number of packages in debian, count the
number of projects that they belong to and then find how many of them
have a decision process. I suggest you do random sampling, since the
number is large (reach a certain level of confidence, say 90% +/-10%
error).

you will find most open source (at least in debian) is built by 1 or 2
developers who make all the decisions without a process in place.

>
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 10:16 AM dmg <dmg at turingmachine.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> > I don't think this has always being the case, but I would say
>> > that
>> > usually people argue in favor or against, and propose different
>> > decisions, in the mailing list, and then during the calls,
>> > consensus
>> > areas are explored until a decision is perceived to have
>> > consensus. But
>> > other people who has participated in these processes may say too
>> > if
>> > this matches their experience.
>>
>> hi Jesus
>>
>> with all due respect, I think most decisions are not
>> reached. Simply, the people who are in charge of them
>> enact them according to the input of others.
>>
>> In other words: the doers control what gets done and how, with the
>> possibility that they take into
>> consideration the input of others.
>>
>> there have been some decisions (few) that require a vote of the
>> board. But in general,
>> we have silent consent.
>>
>> I think this is perfectly fine. It is just the way that most open
>> source projects work.
>>
>> perhaps at some point, the board might get the ability to veto
>> actions by CHAOSS members via a majority
>> vote.
>>
>> > Up to now, my feeling is this worked well. But maybe it is not
>> > scaling
>> > up as we have more people involved in general, people active in
>> > working
>> > groups, the set of people attending all calls, and participating
>> > in all
>> > mailing lists, is getting shorter and shorter (as a fraction of
>> > the
>> > total people involved in CHAOSS as a whole).
>>
>> I think we all have our opinions on what needs/should be done. But
>> unless we are willing to do it,
>> we should not get on the way of those doing it.
>>
>> There are situations where actions of CHAOSS members on behalf of
>> CHAOSS might veer outside the goals of the project (which is
>> subjective---I grant, personally
>> I have see at least one instance of this happening). This might
>> require a process to bring a vote to the validity of those
>> actions.
>>
>> >
>> > * First, comment on your feelings about the decision making
>> > process, in
>> > this specific case and in general. If many of us think that we
>> > need to
>> > decide more formally on a process, we can work on having one. If
>> > not,
>> > we can stick to the current way.
>> >
>> > * Second, if somebody feels that in this specific case we don't
>> > have a
>> > consensus, we can either talk it more broadly, or raising it to
>> > the
>> > CHAOSS Board. We have a meeting in a week, so this would be
>> > timely.
>> >
>> > What do you think?
>> >
>>
>> see above. I have addressed both points.
>>
>> >       Jesus.
>> >
>> > --
>>
>>
>> --
>> Daniel M. German                  "Language alone protects us from
>> the scariness
>>                                    of things with no names.
>>    Toni Morrison ->                Language alone is meditation. "
>> http://turingmachine.org/
>> http://silvernegative.com/
>> dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca
>> replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .
>
>
>
> --
> Emma Irwin (she/her)
> Community Development
> Open Innovation Team



-- 
--dmg

---
Daniel M. German
http://turingmachine.org