[Mageia-discuss] [LONG] yesterday meeting logs, and board election at fosdem

[Michael Scherer]

Hi,

yesterday was the weekly meeting, as posted by Romain. 
The logs can be found here :
http://meetbot.mageia.org/mageia-meeting/2011/mageia-meeting.2011-01-10-19.38.html

And as said in the meeting, founders need to vote for the initial board,
and I am the one in charge of the organisation of this vote. But this
mail is just here to explain the organisation structure, if you already
know it, you can skip ( or read and amend if I am wrong ).

In order to be clear for everybody, let me explain everything.

So first, let's take a look at the page explaining the organisation 
http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=org

There is 2 governing instances :
- the Board 
- the Council

== Council ==

The Council is composed of people elected by the teams, teams are
composed of people who are active in the project. Note that not all team
are formed, far from it and we are working on it. Council handle :

- project day-to-day management, planning, coordination and production
- conflict resolution

== Board ==
The Board is composed of people elected by the current members of the
association ( also refered as "active member of the association", but
this is slightly confusing ). People need to be member of the
association to be a candidate. It handle :

- keeping and advocating the project values, mission & direction
=> try to communicate the spirit of the project, decide if we devote
significant share of ressources of the project or not ( like devoting
one server to a project to reach Mars ( first stupid example I can think
of )). This part should obviously not be micro management, of course.

- communication & resources management
=>  ie handle domain name usage, logo, trademark usage, etc
 
- Council and Teams coordination;
=> ie, handling the creation and vote, and others administrative tasks.

- conflict resolution,
=> when the council decided it was appropriate
 
- holding the association administrative role (money, property, etc.)
=> mainly all the boring tasks

If I remember correctly, this is roughly modeled around the structure of
various bicameral systems, like the one in France, USA, etc. 

IE, the first instance is were most of the thing happens ( Council ),
and the second one ( Board ) is here to handle administrative ( and
boring ) tasks, and make sure the first one do not go wrong. 

Of course, having 2 governing instances in no way prevent people from
giving their input and their feedback, first on their team or anywhere.
We do read mailing list, irc, microblogs, etc and later forums. 
And the 2 structures are here for coordination, not for coercion. Ie,
they cannot force people to do something ( that would either ineffective
or quite illegal in most juridiction in fact ).

So in the light of theses explications ( that will likely be completed
or amended by Romain who did the hard work on this ), let's go on the
actual situation.

== actual situation ==

Team are not all fully formed
( http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=teams ). So far, the i18N team is
running quite well, the packagers team is started and running quite
well, and so does the web team. Sysadmin team is active, but not
formally organized. The artwork is active, the triage have been
gathered, and I do not know for others ( I guess we should have someone
in charge of the overall coordination with a nice management-ready
spreadsheet ).

So the Council is not started at all yet. Of course, it is planned to
start it, and that the Board's duty.

And on the Board side, we do have the association ( with a temporary
board : http://blog.mageia.org/?p=245 ) and so far, only founders are
members of the association
( http://mageia.org/wiki/doku.php?id=founders ). 

== Association ==

Obviously, this will/should change, and people can become association
members in 2 ways :
- from the Council
- by proposition and validation of the Board

The 2nd proposal is likely to be the exceptional way, and the usual way
should be by being elected at the Council. Once being elected at the
Council, either as leader, deputy leader, or representative, people
become active member of the association automatically once they have
done their 1 year term. 

For various reasons, mainly based on requiring a minimal participation
at election ( ie, we need a quorum ), people will also leave the
association if they :
- decide to leave
- are no longer active to the point of not being represented at all
during 2 general assembly ( neither present, nor have delegated their
vote )
- are deceased
- do something really wrong and are kicked out by the board

The exact statuses should be somewhere on the website, in french for the
moment. Romain told me there is still various details to sort out that
were seen after being sent to the french administration and that will be
changed on first general assembly, during FOSDEM. 

So, what will happen at FOSDEM ( this year and for the others, unless
the organizers decide to held it in a totally different and unrelated
time, or the Board decide to change this ) ?

== general assembly and FOSDEM ==

Current members from the association will receive a formal convocation
( by email ) something like 15 days before the event, for the general
assembly. Arnaud Patard, current association secretary, will do it this
year.

Before that, we will gather the list of potential candidates among the
members for being on the board, as the list need to be on the
convocation. Another mail will be sent for that, as this one is already
long, that's my duty.

For the next years, 1/3 of the Board will have to be reelected. For the
first years, it will be voluntary, but after the third year, it should
based on the time people served on the board ( ie, 3 years term ). This
measure is to prevent a fast take over of the association and the board.

Then the current members ( ie founders for now ) will vote for the
board, and the board will then discuss to designated a chair of the
board and council, and who handle what on a administrative level
( secretary, treasurer, and backups )

And after that, the board should take over the founders duty ( ie, the
founders meetings will become board meetings I guess, but that part and
the planning need to be slightly explained, as well as various technical
details ).

So if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask by replying on this
mail.

I will send another mail to founders to gather candidates, and report
here on -discuss 15 days before the assembly. Thanks for reading.
-- 
Michael Scherer