Re: Maximum term for tech ctte members
On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 06:40:22PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au> writes:
> > Would anyone else be supportive of a proposal to set a term for tech
> > ctte membership?
> I just mentioned this today in our TC meeting, so obviously I've been
> thinking along these lines as well and have been wondering if this would
> be a good idea.
Cool.
> > I think set terms, with no term limits would make sense (ie, you're
> > appointed to the ctte, you stay on it for X years, then you either say
> > "thanks, but enough's enough" or "that was fun, I'd like to keep doing
> > it" and the ctte and DPL considers whether to reappoint you in the usual
> > fashion.
> Other bodies of this type take a variation on this approach (and of the
> reappointment rule you propose below) that I quite like: after each term,
> that member may not be reappointed for some period. For example, we could
> say that members serve for four years, and after that four-year period
> they cannot be reappointed to the TC for at least two years.
Yeah; I don't think that's a bad rule in general, but I'm not convinced
it's a great fit for the tech-ctte. The thought experiment that makes me
doubt it is "if a compulsory x year break after n years of service makes
sense in general, shouldn't it make sense now?", or equally, "if it's
too painful for us to do things this way now, why won't it be equally
painful in future (eg if we end up appointing four members at the same time,
and having their terms all expire at the same time as a consequence)?".
Even if you set n as high as 13 years, that'd mean Bdale and Ian would be
due for a compulsory break, despite (from my impression) them both being
enthusiastic contributors.
I was thinking of the "have to appoint someone different" rule I suggested
because that would at least mean you could do something like set n=6,
have Steve, Andi, Bdale and Ian's term expire immediately, but still
reappoint up to three of them almost immediately.
I'm not really convinced by the idea either, though.
Another approach might be, say, four year terms, with a compuslory two year
break after eight years.
> One approach we could take to this would be to randomly assign each
> existing member (except maybe Keith and Colin) to an artificial "start of
> term" date distributed across the past three or four years, for the
> purposes of deciding when our current term ends. That would build in some
> transition time and spread new member selection out in a sustainable way.
I would have thought deliberate scaling would make more sense than random
assignment, eg, "tech ctte members have four year terms; for the purpose
of this rule the existing members are deemed to have been appointed at:
Ian, Bdale: 2010-12-01 (expiry 2014-11-30)
Andi, Steve: 2011-12-01 (expiry 2015-11-30)
Russ, Don: 2012-12-01 (expiry 2016-11-30)
Colin, Keith: 2013-12-01 (expiry 2017-11-30)
"
That still rubs me a bit the wrong way though -- "we limit the tech
ctte to 4 years each, which for Ian means 16 years, for Bdale means
almost 14 years, for Andi and Steve it means 10 years, for Russ and Don
it means 8 years, for Colin it means six years, and for Keith it means
4 years". And again, sure, you can't change the past, but if it's good
for tech ctte members to be reviewed or put on a break after X years,
excluding the current members who've served >X years from the rule
just doesn't seem sound to me.
If we want the opportunity to appoint new members regularly, rather than
expire old members per se, we could just say that: "on July 1st, the two
longest serving ctte members' term expires" to end up with (on average)
four year terms... Probably needs some tweaking though -- maybe it ought
only apply if nobody's resigned in the previous 12 months or something.
Cheers,
aj
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