Re: Maximum term for tech ctte members
On 5/26/14, Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
> Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au> writes:
>> Which is more important, avoiding sudden upheavals where possible,
>> or ensuring individual ctte members have breaks?
>
>> If the latter's more important, then it's better not to special case
>> things now; if the former's more important, shouldn't whatever rule take
>> that into account in case we end up in a similar situation in future? If
>> so, then there's also no need for special casing now...
>
> I guess I see this as a false dichotomy. I agree that avoiding sudden
> upheavals and rotating people through the committee are both important,
> and I'm not sure why we can't just have both via some reasonable
> transition plan that spreads out term end for the future.
I think > 1 election per year might be worth avoiding, so that
elections do not become tedious rigmarole.
For yearly elections and four year terms:
a quarter of the ctte (oldest serving) expired re seat re-election each year.
For every-2-years elections and six year terms: a third of the ctte etc.
If someone resigns, may be a) hold an election for just that seat, or
b) whoever was next-in-line at the last election, to replace that
person,
but in either case only up until that seat would normally be up for
re-election, that way 'normal' elections continue without the schedule
getting messed up due to resignations. This is how Australian
parliamentary elections work.
>>>> 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... [...]
>
>> would work for avoiding sudden upheavals where possible (if everyone
>> resigned simultaneously, you're still stuck, eg), but still supports
>> reviewing or cycling through members, IMO. Any thoughts on that sort of
>> approach?
>
> Yeah, that would achieve the same goals I had in mind and might be a
> better idea.
If the entire ctte were to resign, randomly assign those persons newly
voted in to the various 'seats' which would ordinarily come up for
election in their usual time period, similar to the 'one member
resigns' case above'
> I don't know if it makes sense to have two people's terms expire at the
> same time or to have one person expire every six months. After thinking
> about it for a bit, I think I'm leaning a bit towards the former since I
> think it may help further with bringing a diverse set of people on board,
> since it's psychologically easier to look farther afield in terms of
> diversity of opinion when you're "balancing" that at the same time. But I
> don't think I have a strong opinion.
I suggest that stability of 'normal' elections is valuable from a
"let's not burnout with excessive election admin overheadd" pov.
> I'm not sure there's any entirely fair way to do this. Personally, I'm
It does not need to be 'fair' from a time perspective. Of course the
current seats exist from historical perspective.
Decide on an 'ideal' pathway going forward, and if someones get a few
extra years on the ctte, it does not matter at all. Act in the
assumption that everyone is bringing their best to the table, and
there can be no serious complaints.
>> BTW, I've been using four years because it's a nice round number and
>> reasonably short; did you think it was a good number, or were you just
>> using it as an example too? Based on how long current folks have been on
>> the ctte, I could see 8 years being plausible too, though anything more
>> than that seems overly long to me.
>
> I had picked four-year terms because I think adding one member every six
> months (or two members every year) is probably near the upper limit of
> membership management that the TC can deal with and still get other things
> done, and at the same time I think four years is near the upper limit for
> meaningful term lengths.
The Australian senate (our federal parliament) has 8 year terms. In
the first instance they had half the senate expire in 4 years, so some
of the first elected senators only got a 4 year term. Ever since, it's
almost always half the senate rotating:
at each 4-year election.
I think less than 4 year terms is inadvisable.
> Eight years is an eternity in free software.
Software is different, but there is something comforting about having
a longer-term body, the tech ctte, where its members have longer
terms. I have always thought that the DPL is almost titular given the
short term, but perhaps that's good too, for that role, in the way
'Debian' works.
I suggest 6 year terms (or 8), with roughly half the seats expiring
each half term, with the first half up for re-election once this
decision making process concludes.
The only suggestions I have for seat counts:
a) choose an odd number of seats, to eliminate the personal
frustrations which may arise at contentious votes - "the chair doesn't
need to vote at all unless there's a tie, and the chair's
(odd-numbered) vote is a normal full single vote which breaks the
tie".
Good luck,
Zenaan
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