Ubuntu has a structure of community governance that aims to:

1. ensure that a process is defined that allows people to contribute to decisions regarding the Ubuntu community and distribution,

2. ensure that decisions regarding the Ubuntu distribution and community are taken in a fair and transparent fashion,

3. ensure that necessary decisions are actually taken, even when there is no clear consensus amongst the community.

The Community Council meets every two weeks on IRC, you can propose an item for discussion at a Council meeting by placing it on the Community Council Agenda page on the Ubuntu Wiki.

MadFish wrote:
We have a problem

There's a lot of fighting on xoops.org, and its ugly. There's a lot of reasons and history, but to me the underlying problem is this:

There is no way for community members to have a say in how the project is run, or where its going.

Or to take it back another step:

There are no rules governing how the XOOPS project is run.

A brief history of the XOOPS wars

To summarise, for the past few years, many people tried to make contributions to the XOOPS project, of code and other things. But there was no mechanism for their work to be reviewed or adopted, because the small number of people at the top were too focussed on 'going it alone'. This made would-be contributors frustrated and angry that their work was wasted, and it meant that the progress of XOOPS was slow, because valuable contributions were being missed. Calls for change went unanswered, again because there was simply no mechanisms in place to deal with them. That lead to conflicts and arguments between different camps about what should be done, who was to blame. These arguments got out of control, when again there should have been rules to contain them...and here we are today.

Governance - start of a solution

The XOOPS project desperately needs a system of governance to be put in place that will encourage and capture contributions by the community, and help the project to grow in a united way. The Ubuntu project provides a great example of this:

* Ubuntu governance model

* Ubuntu Code of Conduct

* Ubuntu Leadership Code of Conduct

If I may extract the first part of the Ubuntu Governance model here:

Quote:

Ubuntu has a structure of community governance that aims to:

1. ensure that a process is defined that allows people to contribute to decisions regarding the Ubuntu community and distribution,

2. ensure that decisions regarding the Ubuntu distribution and community are taken in a fair and transparent fashion,

3. ensure that necessary decisions are actually taken, even when there is no clear consensus amongst the community.

Call for a debate on XOOPS Governance

I would like to call for an open and flame-free debate to be held on establishing an open system of governance for XOOPS, involving the wider community, the project leader, project council and leaders of various teams. I suggest that the actual debate should be held in a separate, dedicated thread.

So what do YOU think? Please post your views/comments here. If there seems to be enough support among the community to make it worthwhile, I will approach the management about making this an officially sanctioned activity / getting their involvement in the process.

Please keep this thread 100% flame-free, thanks.

SABDFL
This is not a democracy, it's a meritocracy. We try to operate more on consensus than on votes, seeking agreement from the people who will have to do the work. Mark Shuttleworth, as SABDFL, plays a happily undemocratic role as sponsor of the project. He has the ability, with regard to Canonical employees, to ask people to work on specific projects, specific feature goals, and specific bugs.

He also has a casting vote on the Technical Board and Community Council, should it come to a vote. This capacity is not used lightly. The community functions best when it can reach broad consensus about a way forward. However, it is not uncommon in the open source world for there to be multiple good arguments, no clear consensus, and for arguments to divide communities rather than enrich them. The argument absorbs the energy that might otherwise have gone towards the creation of a solution. In many cases, there is no one "right" answer, and what is needed is a decision more than a debate. The SABDFL should act to provide clear leadership on difficult issues, and set the pace for the project.

It is understood that the divisive use of the SABDFL's authority could weaken the project. For that reason the authority is used carefully, in the hope that it will create momentum in the best direction for the project, breaking stalemates where otherwise competing views would fail to reach consensus.