This sounds reasonable to me. We are approaching our 5 year anniversary as an Apache project (on February 17, 2021) and I have thought that it would make sense to rotate PMC chairs at some point, but making it an annual thing makes things even simpler.
For what it's worth, in this project the PMC chair (Jacques) has mainly only had to exercise the unique responsibilities of the role in the submission of board reports and in giving PMC karma to new PMC members. There have been a handful of instances where the PMC has engaged with the board beyond our routine reports over certain matters, but overall IMHO we've had a generally healthy dynamic in our governance. On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 2:12 AM Julian Hyde <jh...@apache.org> wrote: > > There has been some discussion in the Arrow PMC about rotating the PMC > Chair (also known as the project VP) every year. I wanted to raise the > topic here for discussion among Arrow committers and within the > broader Arrow community. > > Quite a few Apache projects have adopted a policy where they choose a > new Chair on a regular basis. This has several advantages. First, it > helps avoid the perception that the project has a BDFL [1]. Second, it > broadens the skills of the people in the project, exposing them to the > workings of the Apache Board. Third, it can drive cultural change in > the project, because different leaders have different styles. > > To be clear, a PMC Chair has very little actual power. Their main role > is to keep the Board informed, by submitting quarterly reports. > Decisions are made by the PMC, and the Chair's vote has no more power > than any other vote. But the perception is that the Chair speaks with > authority and sets the agenda, and perception tends to become reality. > > In Calcite, for example, we have adopted a policy (without writing it > down as bylaws) where we choose a new Chair around the project's > anniversary, in October every year. Around the same time, the Chair > starts a “State of the Project" discussion thread where we discuss the > challenges and opportunities for the project. It has worked extremely > well. We now have 5 current and former chairs, all of whom are active > in the project, and all of whom can speak authoritatively for the > project as "Former PMC chair, Apache Calcite”. > > I think such a scheme would be of benefit to Arrow. What do you all think? > > Julian > > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life
