FESCo elections

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 06:10 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-06-21 at 09:35 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 02:33:18PM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:

> > So FESCo doesn't really represent the community, because it doesn't 
> > really have a political role, but having the technical leaders elected
> > nevertheless means that the community is represented in the technical
> > decision body.
>
> Yes, it represents the community in technical matters at the least.

IMO, an elected organ is a bad choice to provide leadership on technical
matters, because one can not expect an elected member of an organ to be
technically competent. The domain of "elected organs" is "strategic and
political decisions", not details.

>   But
> you still didn't give me an example of something you feel is "political"
> in nature, so I have no idea if FESCo would be involved in those things
> or not.

Some random examples:

* Pat's static libs issue: This is not a mere technical issue, it's a
distribution policy issue.

* Decisions on "matter of taste", e.g. decisions on when to exclude a
package because of its contents (E.g. US folks tend to get nervous about
matters of "depiction of nudity", Europeans tend to get nervous
"glorification of violence" (games!), members of non-Western cultures
might find other topics offensive).

* Decisions on "freedom of software". E.g. when to allow non-free
software and when not (c.f. the non-free firmware case).

* Decisions on when and how to enforce the "rules of the game".
...

Ralf