Requests to the board

[Josh Boyer]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:47:36 -0600 (CST)
Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> 
> > On Jan 25, 2008 12:22 PM, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > > * If the community has to elect specific members, the differing opinions
> > > between them on various issues being discussed needs to be published.
> >
> > Everything else, I'm happy to see happen.  This however I don't think
> > is a good idea.
> > If you want to publicly ask a particular board member on how they feel
> > about a particular topic. Then ask, publicly or privately as you see
> > fit and they will answer accordingly as they see fit.  If board
> > members feel strongly enough about a need to dissent on a board
> > decision, they can communicate it through fab. But I'm really not sure
> > its wise to encourage people to talk about their personal differences
> > on every board decision. Doing that might blow differences out of
> > proportion.
> >
> > -jef"can't wait for the day when Board members can taut their voting
> > record during re-election campaigns"spaleta
> >
> 
> I've been happy with the board, no need to fix something that isn't
> broken.

Ok, so I agree with this mostly.  But likely for an entirely different
reason.

I've been happy because the board hasn't really done anything that I
feel gets in the way of Fedora growing and progressing.  I can't say I
honestly know what the board does exactly.  Most of the meeting minutes
that come out consist of things like "$random question: revisit later",
or are so terse I've no idea what discussion could have possibly taken
place.

This is not to say the members of the board aren't doing wonderful
things.  Quite the opposite in fact.  I can look at the list of board
members and tell you what most of them do in Fedora outside of the
board itself and they are all excellent people.  But I still haven't a
clue as to what the board does.

Things I have seen come from the board:

- Spins: OK pretty good idea.  The tools exist.  There are some pretty
useful spins.  Now what?  (How do we prevent spin proliferation, how do
we determine what really constitutes a spin we want to promote, etc).

- CD sets for F9:  This is good, but it's hardly something I would call
"big picture".

- FUDCon: IIRC, this came more from Greg than it did the board.  It
seems to be massively popular with those that can attend, so it's good
that the board continues to have them.  Eventually one will have to
happen in a city away from a Red Hat main office to attract new people
and prevent it from becoming "Boondoggle meet us if you can"Con.

Most of the rest of the items I see the board discuss are generated by
non-board members.  The minutes seem to imply the board finds them
interesting, chats about them a bit, and then basically waits for the
originator to do something more with the idea.  Which, I suppose,
is often the best form of leadership.

josh