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font-size: 14px;" lang="x-unicode">Originally we had planned to
re-organize the council about once per year, and that year has now
past.
<br>
<br>
I had always assumed that we would need to do some complicated set
of elections for that. But I had a talk with a senior Apache
Software Foundation person at the Software Freedom Law Center
annual conference in New York a week ago, and asked him about how
they do governance of individual projects. (This was Shane
Curcuru, Director & V. P. Public Relations). For their
projects, a leadership council is initially setup when the project
joins Apache, and after that the leadership council is
self-governing, which in most cases means that the councils pick
their own future members. Obviously that is a lot easier than
trying to agree on who can vote, maintaining some voter list,
nominating people for the council, voting, etc. Really the main
issue here is arm-twisting people into serving, not having an
election to let "the people" (whoever that is) have a voice. The
primary example within Mozilla of a voting process for a Council,
which is Mozilla Reps, has been mired in controversy, and I don't
think we need that right now.<br>
<br>
There needs to be some mechanism for a rogue council to be
replaced, but that can be done by the parent organization in the
rare cases that it is an issue (Mozilla for us, Apache for their
subprojects).
Should we ever believe that it is appropriate for Thunderbird to
register as a fully independent organization, we might need some
more complex system of electing leadership such as you see at the
highest levels of Debian or Apache, but given our current status
and challenges we really don't need the complexity.<br>
<br>
We discussed this at the last Thunderbird bi-weekly meeting, and
there were no objections to following this approach. <br>
<br>
Looking to a reorganized Council, there are many really critical
decisions pending that will affect the very existence of
Thunderbird, so we really need leadership that represents all of
the critical stakeholders and people who need to agree to critical
decisions, as well as leadership that is willing to put in a bit
of work to analyze proposals and comment on them. We need to start
having regular online meetings for example. I don't think that the
actual number of people on the council needs to be fixed, but it
should be at least 5 and less than 12, and presumably an odd
number.
<br>
<br>
Really most people who are current module owners or peers, or
taking on major roles, should be considered to join the Council.
The main criteria at that point will be whether they are willing
to take the time to participate in discussions about critical
issues.<br>
<br>
I would appreciate comments on:<br>
<br>
1) Whether you are supportive or not of just letting the Council
self-select new members.<br>
<br>
2) Suggestions of people (probably privately to me or other
existing Council members) of people that might get neglected who
might be good candidates for a Council position. You can assume
that anyone who is a module owner or peer is already under
consideration.<br>
<br>
Let the arm-twisting begin!<br>
<br>
R Kent James<br>
Chair, Thunderbird Council<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/thunderbird-council"></a>
<br>
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