Re: [boost] RFC.. Steering Committee Bylaws Proposal

Subject: Re: [boost] RFC.. Steering Committee Bylaws Proposal
From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-10-17 04:09:00

On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 10:27 PM, Stefan Seefeld via Boost <
boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> On 16.10.2017 07:35, Rene Rivera via Boost wrote:
> > It has become clear to me, and some others, that the recent decisions of
> > the Steering Committee have exposed various problems with how the
> Steering
> > Committee operates. At CppCon I met with some of the Steering Committee
> and
> > expressed the concerns with them. I also explained, from my experience in
> > other organizations, how such issues are managed. The result of that is
> > that I will be proposing the Steering Committee adopt operating Bylaws.
> But
> > before formally presenting them to the Steering Committee I'd like get
> > feedback on them <http://bit.ly/2hI22DN>[1].
> >
> > The Bylaws hopefully address some key issues that I feel are at the core
> of
> > the current problems:
> >
> > * Decisions can be made without input from interested parties.
> > * Opaque selection of members.
> > * No recourse by library authors to correct problems.
>
> One particularly contentious issue I see is related to the committee's
> mandate: what decisions are in scope for the committee, and how are
> conflicts resolved, should they arise ?
>

Right.. But right now there is nothing to resolve conflicts. Or rather, we
have one, we can ignore what the Committee says. After all there's nothing
now, or in these bylaws, that says we have to "do as we're told".

I believe this question is even bigger than just about the Steering
> Committee and its mandate; it is about the very nature of the Boost
> organization, in relation to its member projects, and in particular, how
> projects as well as the entire organization are governed, how decisions
> are being made, etc.
>

Indeed. And ultimately the question is do we want to build a Committee that
manages such things, or not. If it's the former we need some mechanism for
doing the building. If it's the later... We will have to come up with some
other mechanism and abandon the Committee.

> (To take a recent conflict: is it really the committee's mandate to
> impose what tools individual projects have to use ?)
>

The mandate was never really all that clear in terms of where the lines
where. And the original formation meant for something more than just
existing to happen to the Committee, as far as I understand what happened.
So I guess it's really up to us.

I don't see any of these (or related) questions being addressed anywhere.
>

There is no way those question can be addressed with this first step. But
att least with the bylaws we can amend them and possibly address them over
time.

Thank you for the feedback :-)

-- 
-- Rene Rivera
-- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything
-- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net
-- rrivera/acm.org (msn) - grafikrobot/aim,yahoo,skype,efnet,gmail