On Fri, 2 Apr 1999, Nils Lohner wrote: > - Committees are an extension of the BOD and they should take care of most > of the day to day operation of SPI > > - committees should perform ongoing functions and should not be formed to > accomplish short term tasks
Day to day operations are short term tasks and require ongoing decision making. Maybe I am confused here about the nature of committees. > - how are members appointed? BOD? Leaders? Membership? Actually, should > the committee have an official membership? The membership of a committee > should be 'slow moving' i.e. committees should not have a 'revolving door' > membership with a quick turnover. How do we accomplish this? committees are formed around an issue. This could be by members sharing a certain interest or by the BOD organizing a committee or appointing someone to start a committee. Powers to make decisions are conferred to the committee by the BOD. Unless a committee has the power to make decisions in a certain they can only submit recommendations to the BOD. > - should non-contributing members be able to serve on committees? > [incidentally, that would automatically make them contributing > members...!! I would say no, as I envision committees doing the more > 'important' work and to be a member you should have done some free software > work already. Off course, they can help with committee work, just not be a > member. That in turn would qualify them for contributing membership > eventually.] Of course > - what should the internal structure of the committee look like? how are > decisions reached within a committee? Voting? Consensus? Should there be > a general specification for this, or should this be left up to the charter? > [I'd say leave it up to the charter. The membership committee and > administrative committee should be a lot more reactive, and (for example) an > Open Source committee or other more politically oriented committees should > be more slow moving and stable.] Maybe leave that up to the committee. The chairman needs to be responsible for the actions to the BOD to have accountability.
