I think we must focus on what we agree on - it seems nobody is against
expanding the PMC to include most committers ( or all active committers who don't decline ).
I'm not sure I understand Geir's current position, but I think he still
agrees we need to include most people. I don't think anyone can argue for excluding some active committers - I'm ok with a wait period ( i.e
people who have been active committers for at least N months ), but it has to be a deterministic process.
In addition to that, there are other things we need to do - like making sure we have clearly identified people who will prepare the reports for
each codebase ( be it moderators, release managers, rotation, drafts or whatever a project wants to do - as long as the result is 2-3 names and
a monthly report ).
We also need to clearly identify what the board means by "oversight" ( to be honest - I don't know, I just have a vague idea, haven't seen any official definition :-). Since this "oversight" is motivated by legal concerns - I think we need a definition understandable by everyone, not just guesses.
But doing it all at once is very unlikely to work - with all the strong opinions around jakarta. Divide and conquer - first step is to grow the PMC - IMO you need to simplify your PROPOSAL to make it focused to one point ( instead of solving more problems at once ), and move to VOTE.
Costin
Ted Husted wrote:
I apologize for not quoting. I'm experiencing technical difficulties and making do the best I can.
I meant what I said. We must make an immediate, good faith effort to correct the false and misleading information in the Jakarta guidelines, and give all committers due notice of their true status. Otherwise, there's a point where we cross the line.
The PMC does not now nor has it ever affirmed each and every decision made by the committers. It may affirm some of the release votes, but there's a lot that goes into making a release. And, AFAIK, the PMC is not authorized to delegate its decision making to non-members.
IMHO, we all thought we had the rights and responsibilities of PMC members in the first place. When each and every of these committers were appointed by a subproject, they had the traditional role of a PMC member in mind. Hence, the proposal is to make all Jakarta committers PMC members, which, I believe, was the underlying intent of the original guidelines, and what we all thought was happening in the first place.
I reject the idea that being a PMC member brings additional responsibility. All committers are already responsible for decision-making and oversight. We simply need a mechanism that reminds everyone of our existing responsibilities.
If all committers are subscribed to the PMC list, and each subproject is given the explicit responsibility for regular reporting, I sincerely believe we will be able to easily dispatch the oversight issues. All we need is a little infrastructure, and the volunteers will take care of the rest.
A long-standing principle at Jakarta has always been that the highest, best votes are the commits. We have always rejected the idea of committers without binding votes. To say now that votes are "socially" binding but not "legally" binding is inconsistent with community standards.
I am happy that we do have communities that will honor the votes of all its committers, whether they are legally binding or not. But, our legalities should reflect the community standards, which are that a committer is a committer.
Obviously, if a committer wants to opt-out and become a developer again, that is their choice. But we should not be second-guessing the communities by opting-in committers to the PMC. The community thought they were good enough to have binding votes and binding vetos: who are we to say different?
I've proposed my solution: Promote everyone who doesn't opt-out to the PMC; subscribe all committers to the PMC list; require regular reports from each subproject.
AFAIK, the only other option on the table is to continue to nominate committers willy-nilly and hope-against-hope that a few more heartbeats will somehow give the PMC the wisdom to make decisions on the subproject's behalf and the mystic ability to oversee all the codebases.
I don't think we need to create a Jakarta elite. I think we need to do what we meant to do in the first place: let the committers make the binding decisions.
Accordingly, if a positive consensus develops among the committers regarding the original proposal, we can bring it as a vote in the Jakarta way. Otherwise, I would just let the proposal drop, so that the consensus view can proceed.
-Ted.
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