On 6/7/18 11:39 PM, Mitchell Baker via governance wrote:
Sometimes good words and good aspirations get tarnished with history, and need
to be set aside. I personally aspire to many aspects of our work being a
meritocracy. And the original meaning I took for meritocracy in open source
meant empowering individuals, rather than managers, or manager's managers or
tenure-based authority. I still long to develop these things.
However, it's now clear that so-called meritocracies have included effective forms of
discrimination. This might be hidden bias, where some aspect of identity causes a
person's contributions to be routinely devalued. It might be over discrimination or
harassment. It might be threats that minimize the contributions even offered. Whatever
the cause, open source "meritocracies" suffer from these problems -- open
source projects tend to have less diversity than other software organizations.
Fairly or not, the word "meritocracy" has come to signal systems where there is
little effective restraint on perpetuating discrimination. It may even become a
code-word for organizations that resist the need to build diverse and inclusive
organizations.
I personally long for a word that conveys a person's ability to demonstrate
competence and expertise and commitment separate from job title, or college
degree, or management hierarchy, and to be evaluated fairly by one's peers. I
long for a word that makes it clear that each individual who shares our mission
is welcome, and valued, and will get a fair deal at mozilla -- that they will
be recognized and celebrated for their contributions without regard to other
factors.
Sadly, "meritocracy" is not that word. Maybe it once was, or could have been.
But not today. The challenge is not to retain a word that has become tainted. The
challenge is to build teams and culture and systems that are truly inclusive. This is
where we focus.
So in my role as Owner of the Governance module, I'm confirming that mozilla will retire
the word "meritocracy" from our self-descriptions. I'll also take the
opportunity to confirm that mozilla is fundamentally committed to making participation
and leadership available to all.
Mitchell
Thank you Mitchell, and to everyone else for their contribution to the
discussion.
In addition to the proposal, six further issues have been raised. I’m
summarising them as:
1. Positive contribution in an area of the project is generally a
prerequisite for authority over that area of the project.
2. Authority in the Open Source project shouldn't be tied to being paid
by a particular entity.
3. Authority in an area of the project should involve continued
participation in that area of the project.
4. We should form a stance on the proactive sponsorship of
under-represented groups to future leadership positions.
5. The term “meritocracy” should be removed also from the Roles & Resp
governance page [0] per this discussion (this was pointed out to me
off-list)
6. The Super-Review Role should be removed from the Roles & Resp
governance page [0] per another on dev-platform[1].
Issues 1 and 3 are deemed to be reasonably well covered. 2 is not
directly addressed in the previous proposal and I have updated the
wording of the new proposal, below. 4 will be debated further in a
discussion convened by Emma Irwin. 5 is addressed below. Removing the
Super-Review role (6) has been apparently agreed in dev-platform but not
discussed here nor acted upon.
I will therefore take these three actions:
A. To replace the current text on the governance main page[2] with:
Mozilla is an open source project. Our community is structured as a
virtual organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both
volunteer and employed community members irrespective of employment
affiliation as they show their ability through contributions to the
project. The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing
authority through active interventions that engage and encourage
participation from diverse communities.
B. To replace the current introductory paragraph on the Roles and
Responsibilities page [0] with:
The Mozilla project is governed by a virtual management team made up of
experts from various parts of the community. Some people with leadership
roles are employed to work on the Mozilla project and others are not.
Leadership roles are primarily granted to individuals based on how
active they are in the community, as well as the quality and nature of
their contribution. This is a resilient and effective way to guide our
global community. The different community leadership roles include:
C. And to remove from the Roles and Responsibilities page [0]:
Super-ReviewersSuper-reviewers are a designated group of strong hackers
who review code for its effects on the overall state of the tree and
adherence to Mozilla coding guidelines. Super-review generally follows
code review by the module owner, and the approval of a super-reviewer is
generally required to check in code. More information on code review can
be found in the mozilla.org code review FAQ.
I’ll action these as soon as possible with the Mozilla.org team.
Many thanks,
Patrick
0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/roles/
1.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/fCJMf9hBGHQ
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21topic/mozilla.dev.platform/fCJMf9hBGHQ>
2. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/
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