Folks, we have now spent some time housekeeping and organization, so far without viable
result. The only solution I see is a restart with the help of FESCo and/or Council.
We have 2 organisational units: the SIG and the WG. There are 33 names listed on the SIG
page, of which only 2 have "reappeared" after the reboot (Matthew and Stephen
Smoogen). The last activity was 6 (!) years ago. The current WG lists 8 names, of which 4
are fortunately still highly active. But 50% are inactive at this difficult stage of the
reboot.
There is no rule about leaving members or inactive members by voting or WG decision. The
only possibility is a decision by FESCo / Council.
At the same time, we need to rethink the relationship between SIG and WG. I quote Stephen
Smoogen:
„I think a lot of people applying think that a working group is similar to SIG
membership. I made that mistake when I first tried to join when the Server Working Group
was formed.
Being a member of a working group is basically a commitment for N hours a week to do
whatever is needed for the group to get an edition out the door. It may be writing tests
for QA, it may be writing documentation, it may be sitting in multiple meetings in a week
to reach a consensus on what is getting done in this edition, and it may be coming in
every morning and finding out why a server compose broke (versus others) and see which
commit did it. It is called a 'working' group for that reason.“
Looking at the list of people interested in the Server WG, I reckon we are not in the
happy situation that 19 people want to (and can) make a "commitment for N hours a
week to do whatever is needed".
That considered, it is probably to be preferred to focus more on the SIG. That's the
place where discussion and innovation take place. The first thing we have to do is rebuild
the SIG.
The Working Group is a special arrangement, according to
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Leadership#Working_Groups a subcommittee of FESCo or
Council, requires formal membership and active contributions, and is a requirement for
Editions.
Please remember: According to our rules (Government Charter), Working Group membership is
not a prerequisite for participation in voting and decision-making! Regularly, all (SIG)
participants are involved! We are community based. In case of doubt, members of the
Working Group are the ones who have to ensure implementation if no one else can do it (or
may veto if implementation is not feasible).
Therefore, FESCo / Council should decide / approve
(a) Rebuild Server SIG and gather all interested parties and activists there (see list at
the end), as a replacement for the current long list.
(b) Rebuild the Working Group approving the current active members (see list at the end)
and if considered useful, additional active participants for specific tasks.
(c) Consider to add a section to the Governance Charter alike „A Working Group member is
expected to provide regular and continuous work on one or more of the different work areas
as required to keep Fedora Server running. Membership begins on the day of election and
lasts for 2 years. The first period ends at the end of the second following year. It is
automatically renewed if the member commits to a further period. Renewal is possible as
often as desired.“
Looking over the discussion since November last year, I think we have 2 particular areas
of focus for the coming months (in addition to the ongoing work on releases and bug
fixing):
(a) Building up a new documentation
(b) Establishing a cooperation with Cloud Images
and ultimately probably also
(c) Organisation and Community building
For these areas we would need to find someone who commits to "… N hours a week to do
whatever is needed…" and "...sitting in multiple meetings in a week to reach a
consensus..." (Stephen Smoogen).
Not being a WG would be a serious blow to the Server Edition,
including potentially endangering its prominence on the main website
and in marketing. I would rather it stay being a working group. That
said, the charter for the Server WG is kind of onerous compared to the
Workstation WG and perhaps we need to fix the governance of the Server
WG to be more lightweight. We made similar adjustments in the
Workstation WG a few years ago, and it made things considerably
easier.
--
真実はいつも一つ!/ Always, there's only one truth!