Re: Maximum term for tech ctte members
Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au> writes:
> On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 06:40:22PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> 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)?".
Well, I guess my point is that I think it *is* a good idea now. I will
probably do something like this myself regardless of whether we change the
general system or not because I think it's better for the project to
rotate people through the committee.
> 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 should be clear: for me, it's not about whether the current members are
active and valuable contributors. Let's take for granted that's the case.
The problem remains that as soon as we put together a group of eight
active and valuable contributors, nothing ever changes until one of those
people steps down.
That's obviously not the worst situation we could be in, but I don't think
it's the best either. I'd prefer to see more project members rotate
through the Technical Committee, for a variety of reasons stated in my
previous message. Please don't take this as commentary on the current
membership at all.
>> 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)
> "
I was not particularly clear on what I meant by random assignment. What I
had intended was to designate six artificial "start of term" points in the
past four years and then have all the members who have served for over
four years to just draw those out of a hat. Not completely randomly
generating a start date.
We could also do it in order of seniority. I have no strong opinions
there. The transition method for something like this is always somewhat
tricky, and there's no entirely "fair" way to do it.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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