Re: [gentoo-dev] Democracy: No silver bullet

[Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>]

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Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:42:48 -0500 Lance Albertson
> <ramereth@gentoo.org> wrote:
> | I'm afraid those days are in the past unless some kind of fork happens
> | where the folks who think we need a leader go their way and the folks
> | who prefer the leader-by-committee approach go their way.
> 
> The two aren't mutually exclusive. A strong council can provide the
> equivalent of a single leader without the problems of what to do when
> the leader gets sick, and with less chance of a screwup because of
> increased discussion.
> 
> The problem, of course, is how to get a strong council...

I partially agree that a strong council will help the situation, but the
problem with any leadership-by-committee model is the lack of quick
decisions. Many times things come up that need a quick resolution (when
I say quick, I mean within a few days). And if you have a committee of 7
or so people that live in several different timezones, its extremely
hard to get them together to discuss it all. The council has its merits,
but it also has its weaknesses, this one being one of them. I think I
mentioned 6mo ago that we could keep the council, but select one person
to sort of be the "operational lead" to make quick decisions so that
development moves on. This type of person can try and get all the
opinions of the council members and make a decision based on that. If
they screw up, then the council can demote the person and find someone
else. Of course, this won't cover the "what if they screw up so badly
that it hurts Gentoo long term?" but that's where the level of trust
needs to be applied to your leaders. If you voted on them to be on the
council, you should trust at least one of them to make daily decisions
for the good of the council.

-- 
Lance Albertson <ramereth@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Infrastructure | Operations Manager

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