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

Emma Irwin eirwin at mozilla.com
Tue Nov 20 18:38:19 UTC 2018


I am not sure I understand your point.  You feel like CHAOSS is like Debian?

On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 10:37 AM dmg <dmg at uvic.ca> wrote:

> 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
>


-- 
Emma Irwin (she/her)
Community Development
Open Innovation Team
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