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• Launchpad entry: https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/making-the-community-scale

• Packages affected:

Summary

As the Ubuntu community grows, there is an increased pressure on the elected leaders of the community in the Community Council and Technical Board. This spec is a placeholder for a discussion of best practices around governance issues such as resolving conflicts, approving new members or developers and formalizing the nomination and election processes regarding new CC or TB members.

Rationale

Community Council

For the past months, the Community Council has kept up with its obligations to deal with membership applications, but haven't dealt with other community issues such as the IRC network discussion or approving a "Localisation / Translation Team Leader".

Most of the CC members are among the busiest in the community and have enormous responsibilities elsewhere, and often have difficulty finding the necessary time for the CC meetings, much to the dissatisfaction of the people hoping to have their issues resolved or their applications approved. As it seems, the CC does not scale to follow the increasing involvement of new contributors in the community which can frustrate new contributors and council members both to the point where they would rather invest their energy elsewhere.

Furthermore, pr. 9/30-2006, the 2-year term of the current CC members officially ended (as per the first CC meeting held on 9/30-2004. Yet no distinct process for succession has yet been initiated.

Technical Board

The Technical Board seems to run much smoother. But also here many of the members are nearing the end of their one-year term. Setting down best practices for succession would be the appropriate.

SABDFL

With the SABDFL sitting in both the TB and the CC, yet not having too good a track record of taking part in these meetings, it may relevant to consider whether the SABDFL should be a direct member of these groups who is expected to show up and take part in every meeting from start to finish, or whether he should be elevated to a position where he is contacted or referred to in cases where the CC or TB disagree or a general policy decision needs to be made.

BoF agenda and discussion

• The floor is open on all of the above.

CategorySpec