I know we currently have a situation where multiple Community Groups (CGs) apparently "sponsor" a single Project, but the more I think about the issues it has caused, and the more I read the Constitution, the more problematic the practice seems to be. Here is a list of the reasons:
1. The Constitution makes no use of "sponsor" as a relationship between CGs and Projects. The current practice therefore seems to have no constitutional basis. 2. The Constitution seems to strongly suggest that a Project only has a relationship with a single CG, although it doesn't definitively state that is the case (8.2): "Community Group decisions that are specific to a single project are made through discussion and voting/consensus on the asynchronous meeting place (e.g., mailing list) for that project, whereas general Community Group decisions are made on the Community Group's general discussion place" 3. Under the constitution, Projects are formed and terminated by a vote of the 'owning' CG (8.4): "Decisions of a Community Group are determined by several related voting systems, chosen per action type based on the degree of consensus or quorum needed to make the decision: ... Action Types ... Consensus ... Initiate new project. Terminate project." The constitution says nothing about how such votes are to be held if multiple CGs are involved. For example, how does a project that is 'sponsored' by multiple CGs be terminated? 4. Conflict resolution when multiple CGs "sponsor" a Project. Example: the recent call for the Desktop CG to be terminated. The root cause of this issue was disagreement with a Project, yet it was completely unclear which CG actually 'owned' the Project, and who should therefore be held accountable for its actions. I would therefore propose that the ad-hoc practice of allowing multiple CGs to "sponsor" a given Project be discontinued, as it has no clear constitutional basis and it clearly causes far more problems than it ever solves. -- Alan Burlison --
