Re: [gentoo-project] Proposed Revisions to QA GLEP-48

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 5:26 PM, hasufell <hasufell@g.o> wrote:
> On 11/13/2013 07:02 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> In virtually every
>> organization I'm aware of (corporations, non-profits, governments,
>> courts, etc) the people at the top are elected, and anybody below
>> them derives their authority from those at the top.
>
> And that is a misconception. All authority should be derived from
> popular vote.
>
> As soon as one elected authority appoints another authority, the
> system is screwed and the division of powers rotten, because the
> elected authority will likely not appoint another authority that could
> make their lives more difficult (and that is what happens in virtually
> every organization I'm aware of including governments, courts...).

Well, usually things are done the way they are done so that we're not
having elections for every single political office from the MPs down
to the local dog catcher and police officers.  People have enough
trouble making informed votes for a few offices, let alone many.  So,
it is a compromise.

I'm not opposed to having direct annual elections of the QA lead if
the community REALLY wants this.  However, I think having them be
accountable to the council which is elected annually is a big
improvement.  I'm not encouraging every council that comes along to
rip apart the QA team and form an entirely new one - it is more about
accountability and confirmation.

>
> That's the same with comrel. They are loosely backed up by the
> council, but there is no proper constitution process.

Well, I figured that QA is in the most dire straights and needs to be
reconstituted anyway, so we might as well sort that out first.  It
would certainly make sense to do something similar with Comrel
long-term. You could argue that Infra is also in a similar position,
although there are complications with that since some Infra members
are associated with organizations that sponsor hardware, etc.  I think
it makes sense to focus on QA first and then later worry about how to
apply what we learn to other groups.  The council has been making a
lot of changes lately, so I don't want to go too crazy.  :)

>
> However, that process is not strictly required to fix structural
> problems... unless we turned bureaucratic. In that case I want to vote
> on the QA lead.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're trying to say here.
Seems like the options on the table are:

1.  Status quo.  QA appoints itself.
2.  Council confirms/appoints QA lead.  (Indirect democracy.)
3.  Direct election of QA lead.  (Direct democracy.)

I'm not sure if another 1-2 elections per year are worth the added
accountability of #3, but I'd prefer either #2-3 to #1.  Oh, if we did
do #3 I'd still encourage allowing the council to appoint interim
leads - they would hold office until a successor is elected.

Rich