Session: Governance Styles
Organizer: Randy Fay
notes: Jefro
[RAW NOTES]
drupal
civilty consensus do-ocracy
equality built into history not expandable
no policy making techniqiues
dries- benevolent dictator for life bdfl
governance can mean number of tihngs
just making clear way that decisions are made
if >1 people have opinions, may never make decisions
need technique for dealing with conflicts
culture makes everything work
governance makes culture work better
eg with government
some families work with minimal governance bc culture is strong
interesting diversity of communities
debian - constitution, membership criteria, voting, exec director voted
no commercial sponsor
very explicit democratic organization
yet roots in anti-authoritarianism
"nobody can make you do nothin'"
kde - less structure than drupal, sum is conflict resolution group
about 1000 contribs
value determined by contribution
many open source projects have benevolent dictator
ubuntu, wikipedia - founder
debian does not
ubuntu also has a commercial sponsor
with the purse strings go the power
will determine direction of project
in drupal, deny that have one but actually do
if choose to spend on community, will affect it
wikipedia has benev dictator, explicitly limited power
on governanace pages, described - privilege relinquished by x conversation
still holds a lot of power informally
wordpress.org - open source community with bdfl, matt mullenweg
doesn't mind being directive
significant set of contribs
wordpress.com company - automattic
dries lets community make decisions, only steps in when necessary
linux kernel - 1200 people, huge user base but narrow contributor path
12k lines of code per day
12-ish maintainers, each line [patch] has maintainer & submitter
linus final right to veto? does not tolerate fools
slightly more than half corporate contribs
healthy division among many companies - top company is maybe 12% code, 30% signoffs
compiling for 60-70 hw platforms in australia, automated testing
fedora - divided out governance of tech issues vs people issues, event issues
formed steering committee for tech decisions
ambassador steering committee manages events
many conflicts in any community - technical approaches, personnel touchyfeely issues, resolving conflicts
people good at resolving one type not necc good at other
also board of directors to help as final arbiter
as director - if I have to be involved, doing something wrong
thus at odds with board
hired by redhat
redhat wanted fedora on its own for many reasons
separate foundation didn't work
rh pays bills but do not dictate
hands-off
open & transparent
[david strauss] frustrated with influence from canonical, specif shuttleworth
frust withdouble standard - not actually meritocratic
for fedora, rh has to go through same process, via steering committee
don't exercise back channel influence
tierry carrez
gentoo - bd failed, made way for more democratic system - needs to be respected, otherwise if not representative, doesn't work
linux kernel grew organically
canonical - model is sneaky, pretending to be open source, but mark has strong veto power
make strong calls not necc representing what community wants
sometimes fedora model makes harder to get things done
focused on short term or long term success? top down is short term, open/collaborative/meritocratic helps grow community overlong term
openstack
building governance from scratch
like linux kernel, open innovation setting
no single company owns
hrad to have benev dictator model, hard to hire one person respected by everyone
just elected policy board, change out every 6 months
moving toward foundation model - board on one side, control brand etc, tech community still meritocratically elected sep from money side
java.net - forge/editorial page sonja barry
sponsored by oracle
benevolent dictator
tryto be invisible but available
advocate for community to oracle, but if division create safe place w/o registering opinions
java community process, glassfish/flagship java projects
sb has veto power
loose terms of use
any individual group/project can create own governance as long as narrower than overall terms of use
lawsuit
hudson v jenkins - expecting email from sb, got email from glassfish team didn't open, didn't realize project being moved, panic attack in public
communication broke down
just a stupid miscommunication
lesson in good forks & bad forks
reason why communities break up & move on, better than missed email
hudson could have been stronger
job to educate oracle about community
oracle spends 10x
corp open source, like ms - implicit structure, vs. github freeform
depends on personality of project founder
sb welcome anyone - splash page on java.net just fine
big projects need massive bug trackers, etc so need resources from other places
still in infancy
homeschooling - rodger williams
bd has to have respect from people
all people governance
re asshole talk - mistake not to throw people out fast enough
drupal - working group mon/tue, dries present
angie byron lioness of civility
expect technical vs community division
already have some structure for technical division
issue queues
but deadlocks often abandoned instead of resolved
on technical side
on community side, conflic resolution group
funadmentally, no explicit wayto create or enforce policy
tends to be ad hoc
implicit policy tends to make people feel disempowered
create ways to make explicit policy, but wnat to be gentle
dstrauss
less policy, or more clear origin for policy
fiefdoms
sometimes grows organically (esp if they wrote the code)
american business model is last vestige of feudalism
drupal.org, until a yr ago couldn't make it work better
just a few people held the power, would veto attempts to go forward
if they didn't understand it
about 1.5 yrs ago, initiative & set policy, now enormous # beautiful things have happened as a result
went from having cathedral to instances, sandboxes, results w/o having to think theoretically
workflow & tools need to evolve at same pace as policy
initiative for core, delegated some power down to initiative owners
but infrastruc hasn't evolved to accommodate workflow
tried to layer policy onto system based on groundswell from flat plane
greg dunlap - can say what's important, but doesn't force anyone to work on it
dstrauss went to fedora to gain perspective on issues, wnat to see drupal take on gigantic underatkings
like systemd
not everyone agrees with, but big risky thing, requires hwolesale coordination
who decides? how to get people to work on
jared smith - fedora steering committee chooses what ready to go in, take longer, won't accept
some credibility in community - we voted for fesco
body to make decisions & stand behind
organizational democracy
manage coworking space
entirely democratically run as a business
decide terms of service by majority vote
difficult sometimes
forces into conversation
avoid voter fatigue, don't vote on boring stuff
weekly civics meetings on direction
membership in community - relative parity
find own level
those most interested will stick around to vote
those who have a goal in mind
java.net 840k members
democracy doesn't scale
thierry
debian counter example
project lead tries to stay out as much as possible