Bugs on web page

[Reinhard Müller]

Am Donnerstag, den 12.01.2012, 15:18 +0000 schrieb MJ Ray:
> I think it's also an example of three ways that FSFE's decision-making
> is undemocratic:
> 
>  1. IIRC the autonomy is only at team level (in debian, for example,
> the autonomy is also generally present at volunteer and project);

The autonomy is at the level of who's affected. Decisions about DFD are
generally taken by people involved with DFD. Decisions about FSFE's
booth at FOSDEM are taken by the people participating in the booth. The
decision whether I want to be at FOSDEM on Saturday, on Sunday, or on
both days, is with me alone (well, and with my wife ;-)).

While I strongly believe that this is the most reasonable way to handle
it, I don't think the definition of group size is not a matter of
democracy but rather of subsidiarity.

>  2. the process is structureless/undocumented;

Even worse: the process is flexible and up to the group to define, as
well as all members of the group are fine with it. I know that some
Fellowship groups make decisions while they meet over a beer.

BTW, for essential decisions (such that affect the whole core team of
FSFE), the process is strictly structured and documented. The
documentation is available to every member of the core team.

I've never seen it as a requirement for democracy that the documentation
of the decision process is available to people outside the domain of the
decision. It is an interesting political question, although I don't
think it would change much in the case of FSFE.

>  3. the process is opaque, with the outcome usually appearing without
> closure with the reporter/suggester.

I agree that this happens sometime, and that this is bad. If the outcome
of a decision is not communicated to the people giving input or
requesting the decision, it is certainly not on purpose, and I hope that
the word "usually" above is more of a subjective feeling than a fact,
since it would mean we're bad at communicating what we do.

Sometimes our decision processes take long, also related to key people
in FSFE travelling a lot. Sometimes we simply forget to report back. If
in doubt what came out for a specific issue, just ask.

FWIW, I don't think that this is a matter of democracy, it's a matter of
communication.

Thanks,
Reinhard
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