[fab] looking at our surrent state a bit

[Josh Boyer]

On Sat, 2006-11-04 at 00:02 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Normally they are quiet most of the time. But they raise their voice if
> > they think that's needed or if it's an area where they are working. That
> > works quite well.
> 
> I read FESCo meeting mins everytime and I dont see many non FESCo 
> members actively participating or commenting in between meetings.

I call BS.  I can think of a few offhand without even trying.  It
doesn't happen every meeting, but it does happen.  Chris Weyl, Jesse
Keating, even me before I became part of FESCo.  We _do_ let non-FESCo
people participate whenever they'd like.

> > Well, why meet then in any case? Because it does not work. So we meet on
> > IRC.
> 
> The meeting is for FESCo members. If non FESCo members start actively 
> participating and expressing their opinions on the channels then it 
> would become tiresome pretty soon. If you want to hear opinions of the 
> larger community its better to do that on the list instead of in between 
> the meeting which can be done in this list for the board meetings.

We do both.  It works just fine.  Most people are _worth_ listening to
if they have well thought out comments on the topic at hand.  And if
not, there are OPs in IRC.  We've _never_ had to use that though.

> 
> > But why should we lock the community out there? That would be stupid.
> 
> That is exactly how FESCo meetings were held before. This doesnt lock 
> out community if the meetings results are published regularly and can be 
> dicussed in the lists.

Yes before.  Quite a while ago.  Not anymore.

> > Sure, there may be discussions that need to be held in private, but that
> > doesn't happen that often (and if, on the private fesco-list).
> 
> If we force ourselves to have public discussions everytime, we wont be 
> able to discuss things freely effectively. Some things are better off 
> discuss between people offlist or in a private list or meeting. Board 

I don't buy it.  The only time I would think such a private discussion
would be required are if legal matters are being discussed.  As for
phone vs. IRC, yes that does have some advantages.  At the disadvantage
of being open and transparent.  My personal opinion is that the
disadvantage of that outweighs the apparent benefit.

josh