Hi FESCo,
Recently the Workstation WG decided to actually read its governance document. We realized the document is pretty stale and no longer reflects how the WG actually operates.
The current document is here. The WG proposes the following to replace it with this updated document.
Note that changes to the document require approval from FESCo. Some of the changes include: removing the rule that the WG has nine voting members (we recently expanded to 10), removing the FESCo liaison position that we had all forgotten had ever existed (although it might be cool to bring back, it's been a long time since this role was filled and that would require expanding to 11), removing references to IRC (we've switched to holding meetings on BlueJeans) and to conducting business on the mailing list (we switched to Pagure long ago). There's also a new clarification that the WG can make binding decisions regarding software contained in the Workstation product, and that all decisions may be overruled by FESCo, to avoid any doubt on either point. The new version tries to be more general about tools and processes to allow us more flexibility to change in the future, and reduce the chances that we'll again wind up brazenly violating the governance document for 5+ years without anyone noticing.
We're hoping this should all be uncontroversial. If you could approve the new document, that would be super.
+1. I think that all the changes are very reasonable, and even apart from the specific issues fixed, the new document is generally better.
+1
Mostly +1; The point of the FESCo Liaison was that it should be an existing member of the WG whose responsibility is to communicate with FESCo any plans that might have a wide-ranging impact. So you wouldn't need to expand membership to restore it. Just pick someone who is willing to be responsible for letting FESCo know when Big Things are in the pipeline.
APPROVED (+6,0,-0)
Metadata Update from @churchyard: - Issue tagged with: pending announcement
Huh, the fact that meetings are, in blatant violation of the current policies, held on a proprietary platform, which I suppose is also not logged (a huge step back in transparency), and that this change aims to retroactively and permanently sanction this abusive practice is an uncontroversial change?
The general tenor of this change is to remove any concrete language from the rules so that the WG can do any darn thing it wants without FESCo approval. I do not understand why nobody in FESCo is objecting to this grab of power at FESCo's expense.
"The Working Group will keep records of discussions, meetings, and votes, and will make these records public to the Fedora community."
The general tenor of this change is to remove any concrete language from the rules so that the WG can do any darn thing it wants without FESCo approval.
"Working Group decisions may be overruled by FESCo."
I do not see how a meeting on a proprietary videoconferencing platform can provide anything comparable to an IRC meeting log, unless they have somebody manually typing in (or stenographing) every word that is said.
Scrutiny and suggestions are appropriate and appreciated.
The working group has been using video meetings for a couple of months, and so far considers them rather effective, in particular when accommodating domain experts as guests. But also, I think, it's a diversification of communication because such a vast amount already happens in written form.
Every meeting is announced on desktop@, with agenda, in advance. The email includes the URL for the video meeting, and meetings are open for anyone to attend. We welcome it. You can join by web browser, or by phone.
The working group is a deliberative body, not a court, having a stenographer is not indicated. There's a long history of deliberative bodies recording topics discussed, motions made, noting agreement and objections, the nature of those objections, and decision vote totals when not unanimous. Those are the minutes. Everyone is asked to review them for completeness, and are explicitly approved by the working group each meeting. They can be found on meetbot, the meetbot generated summary is posted to desktop@ list with links to the full log, same as IRC meetings.
A substantial amount of discussion continues to happen in pagure issues and on the mailing list. I've witnessed no drop off in activity as a result of video meetings. Pagure issues form the basis of the meetings, including preparation, and are kept up to date with the latest status.
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/Z5N6Z6TL5MI6UICFG6RXCPCKU3UFYALJ/
Metadata Update from @dcantrel: - Issue close_status updated to: Accepted - Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)
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