Re: [OpenCA-Devel] Foundation documents

[Oliver Welter]

Hi Sergei,

Theory of controlling the complex systems differentiate two types of the system control:

1) "closed" board. Old board-members elect new board-members.


Example of type 1 system: a committee of a totalitarian political party.
Example of type 2 system: parliament in a democratic state.

2) "open" board. ALL community elect new board-members and re-elect old board-members on a regular basis. Theory says that type 1 system leads to degeneration of the board and extinction of the community, while type 2 system usually can adapt to new challenges of the environment and thus community can survive for a much longer period of time.

Even Type 2 will lead to degeneration if there are no new people who will make it up to the board. I see a big danger for the project in Model 2 - Image a kind of "take over" - you need to get some people around you, vote against the board and bring in all your mates. The problem is, that the active dev-team will not be much larger then 10 people and it is easy to find another ten to wipe them out and take over the whole project. In the worst case than incorporating the brand name, changing the license, etc. I dont hope that this will happen a day, but if you look at the example of the Mambo CMS at the moment, there is such a situation.

I do not mean that OpenCA looks like totalitarian political party,

development of the project.

but in practice choosing between types 1 and 2 means choosing between tendency for either 1) conservative, or 2) adaptive and flexible

I hope that the paragraphs about the automatic retirement of a board member will wipe out people who are not "useful" for the project anymore.

Who offers new board-member, and who will vote? It is easy. Anyone who is active enough to send his offer or vote via email should be considered "an active user", and his vote should be counted.

Oliver
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I agree that we should perhaps open the board for incoming suggestions from the community - but choosing "1)" means that a newbie must finde one board member as spokesman, this should not be to difficult... The other question is, whats about the max number of board members ? This is somewhat against a really open board...

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