Hi Emma & Henri, Thanks very much for sharing these important points. They feel like very valuable responses to an even bigger question : ‘What are the attributes of Inclusive Open Governance?’. It’s a topic very much on my radar, and our D&I in Open Source Community Call on June 27th has this exact title!
I want to propose that we use that call (in part) to kick off the discussion with others thinking about open governance, with your proposals as a starting point. We did a similar exercise for community leadership recently[1] , which has been very valuable as well. How does that sound as a way forward for these particular suggestions? Thanks, -Emma Irwin https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/what-s-next-for-volunteer-leadership-in-2018-shared-agreements/25091 On Wednesday, May 30, 2018 at 9:02:32 AM UTC-7, Emma Humphries wrote: > Let's add a fourth item to Henri's list on the role of > authority/leadership/maintainership in OSS to elevate and sponsor the next > generation of authority/leadership/maintainership, and to emphasize that > the next generation of OSS leadership should come from underrepresented > groups since they carry knowledge of the blind spots and owches that the > projects we work on have. > > -- Emma > > On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 2:28 AM Henri Sivonen via governance < > governance@lists.mozilla.org> wrote: > > > On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 4:06 PM, Patrick Finch via governance > > <governance@lists.mozilla.org> wrote: > > > To sum up: > > > -Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge > > > evident bias in representation in the project. > > > -The word “meritocracy” itself has become a bone of contention which is > > > unhelpful to us. > > > > I agree that we should lose "meritocracy" from the governance > > description. A while ago, on this list, I linked to > > https://webmink.com/essays/open-by-rule/ and before doing so debated > > with myself whether I should include a disclaimer about terminology > > that hasn't aged well. I ended up not doing so and got Warnocked. > > > > I think we should communicate two things that have previously been > > supposed to be covered by "meritocracy" and are still reasonable > > aspects of good Open Source governance: > > > > 1) Positive participation in an area of the project is generally a > > prerequisite for authority over that area of the project. We expect > > module owners to have contributed to the area they are module owners > > of prior to becoming module owners. (This has the downside that > > authority needs the kind of time commitment that may be hard to > > sustain unless paid to commit the time, which introduces bias in terms > > of people who are able to commit a lot of time to the project despite > > not being paid to do so. Still, the next item wouldn't really work > > without some relation to demonstrated positive participation. It > > doesn't mean that people who haven't committed the time to have formal > > authority shouldn't be heard.) > > > > 2) Authority in the Open Source project shouldn't be tied to being > > paid by a particular entity. (Firefox development is now much more > > concentrated to being paid by Mozilla than it was e.g. in 2004, but > > co-development is a generally healthy thing in Open Source. Therefore, > > I think we should keep our governance structure open to more > > co-development again in the future and be careful not to close off > > governance participation to current co-developers.) > > > > A third point that we historically haven't been good at but have > > become better at of late is: > > > > 3) Authority in an area of the project should involve continued > > participation in that area of the project. (We now have the module > > owner emeritus status, which acknowledges past participation while > > withdrawing current authority.) > > > > -- > > Henri Sivonen > > hsivo...@hsivonen.fi > > https://hsivonen.fi/ > > _______________________________________________ > > governance mailing list > > governance@lists.mozilla.org > > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance > > _______________________________________________ governance mailing list governance@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
