[Evergreen-governance-l] Response to Dan's question about Oversight Board delegation (was Re: Phone Call re: Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement)

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Dan Scott wrote at 17:11 (EST) on Monday:
> Bradley, if you have a chance to clarify what you meant, on the chance
> that I read your intent incorrectly, it would be appreciated.

Sure, no problem.

> Rather than "Evergreen Oversight Board", I suspected that Bradley
> meant to say "Evergreen Project", meaning following our development
> norms contributions as documented at
> http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=contributing.

> Alternately, perhaps Bradley meant "Evergreen Oversight Board" insofar
> as development decisions are delegated to the project committers.

Put simply: I meant both.  You've sussed it out correctly: from
Conservancy's point of view, all software/documentation decisions are
delegated by Conservancy to the Oversight Board.  The Oversight Board
then, of course, can make a further delegation, or set up its own
policies for those topics, such as those at
http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=contributing .

(BTW, upon reading that URL above, I think the only place Conservancy
might even want to comment on the policies therein is the "Developer's
Certificate of Origin".  However, in this case Conservancy's only
comment would be "it looks pretty good". I bring this up only to point
out the kinds of things Conservancy might be concerned about and want
input on.  The rest of what I see on that URL are precisely the types of
things that Conservancy intends to delegate back to the Project and its
Oversight Board.)

> choosing a different code repository, naming a new set of committers,
> setting up a process by which contributions must be approved by the
> Oversight Board, etc - but in my opinion that would be a rather
> ruinous path for the project to follow.

Certainly Conservancy doesn't want a project to follow a "ruinous path".
This is precisely why Conservancy seeks to make sure the Oversight Board
truly represents the actual and natural leadership of the Project.  It
seems to me if there is legitimate fear that the Oversight Board might
change the development processes outlined in
http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=contributing in a
deleterious way, community members who are thusly concerned should bring
that up immediately.  Indeed, we should probably make sure those with
such concerns have a seat on the Oversight Board, so they can make sure
project contribution and other development/documentation-related
policies are well looked after.

Having said that, I must point out it honestly seems unlikely to me that
the Oversight Board would fail to appropriately delegate these sorts of
contribution policies to the right person.  I would suspect, in fact,
that the clearer structure created by Conservancy membership and its
formal delegation to the Oversight Board would clarify who is in charge
officially to make those sorts of determinations.  Specifically, I
suspect that day-to-day won't change much with regard to project
oversight, but formal structures will then exist to give that day-to-day
work some organizational legitimacy.

If I've misunderstood the concern here, though, please let me know.  I
really think there isn't anything to be concerned about on this front,
though.
-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy