Re: Technical committee resolution
On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:02:20 +0100, Michael Banck <mbanck@debian.org> said:
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 09:57:15AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:48:28 +1100, Anthony Towns
>> <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> said:
>>
>> > 3. When there are 8 members, the Project Leader may appoint any
>> > Developer to the Technical Committee replacing the longest
>> > serving current member, provided there have not already been
>> > 2 or more appointments to the Technical Committee during the
>> > current Leader's term.
>>
>> This is a bad idea. The length of term of service is a bad indicator
>> of utility of the member to Debian. Consider this scenario: what if
>> the longest serving members are the most active members of the team,
>> and the newer members being mostly MIA, you have just degraded the
>> tech ctte's utility.
>>
>> The grounds for removing people should be whether they are present at
>> all (which is the criteria used when we last shed people from the
>> ctte), or some measure of the quality of contribution.
>>
>> Most of the arguments posited against term limits apply here; because
>> this is just term limits in disguise (with a term limit of 4 years).
> AJ explicitely commented that it would be possible for the DPL to
> remove/reappoint somebody at one go, essentially making them the
> youngest standing member on the TC and recognizing their utility.
Which brings to mind the other, subtle impact of this proposal:
this removes one of the Debian institutions that was not under the
thumb of the project leader; and makes the line of command more
central, making the project leader more powerful than before.
I am uncertain whether this is good or bad; but thinking back to
the times of Bruce, central authority with only a heavy weight
impeachment kind of process (even if term limited by one year) was
something people back then were somewhat leery of, so not everything in
Debian is under direct control or authority of a single office bearer.
I have no idea is I am the only one left that is uneasy about
such concentration of authority, or whether my fears are overblown, but
I do think this aspect merits pondering.
manoj
--
Moebius always does it on the same side.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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