Module Ownership Proposal -- silence is golden
Mitchell Baker
I know it's a very busy time across the Mozilla project, with a bunch of
releases heating up around the project. Even so, historically people
have time to say something when a proposal goes by that they don't like.
So I'm going to take the view that silence is acclaim. Or at least that
silence is short-hand for the view "Well, duh, of course we should do
something like this. This looks pretty good to me, and close enough to
go forward with."
Unless I hear some serious concern in the next day or two, I'm going to
proceed. I'm going to make at least one change to the proposal. In
order to have a very clear decision-maker, it was suggested that we have
only one sub module owner. So Brendan will be the sub-module owner.
I assume I'll be a peer.
A second possible change is that I am wondering if the group of people
who are involved are actually peers. Peers in general have the
authority to make decisions as does the module owner. I've thought of
this group as people involved in making a decision but not necessarily
making decisions themselves. I think this is more like a "member" than
a peer. On the other hand, this could be handled by the level of
delegation made to the peers. I'll talk to Brendan and perhaps the
initial group about this.
Next step is to identify an initial group. I'll talk to Brendan and
get a plan for the initial group together. As sub-module owner it's
Brendan's decision, but I'll make some recommendations.
Mike Connor
On 1-Apr-08, at 1:59 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:
>
> I know it's a very busy time across the Mozilla project, with a
> bunch of
> releases heating up around the project. Even so, historically people
> have time to say something when a proposal goes by that they don't
> like.
>
>
> So I'm going to take the view that silence is acclaim. Or at least
> that
> silence is short-hand for the view "Well, duh, of course we should do
> something like this. This looks pretty good to me, and close enough
> to
> go forward with."
>
> Unless I hear some serious concern in the next day or two, I'm going
> to
> proceed. I'm going to make at least one change to the proposal. In
> order to have a very clear decision-maker, it was suggested that we
> have
> only one sub module owner. So Brendan will be the sub-module owner.
> I assume I'll be a peer.
Ultimately, someone has to make the final call. Brendan seems like
the ideal person to have that responsibility.
> A second possible change is that I am wondering if the group of people
> who are involved are actually peers. Peers in general have the
> authority to make decisions as does the module owner. I've thought
> of
> this group as people involved in making a decision but not necessarily
> making decisions themselves. I think this is more like a "member"
> than
> a peer. On the other hand, this could be handled by the level of
> delegation made to the peers. I'll talk to Brendan and perhaps the
> initial group about this.
In the code side of the project, peers are effectively deputized to
act in place of the module owner, but it is exceptionally rare that a
difficult or controversial decision would be made without the explicit
input and/or approval of the module owner/other peers. I believe that
the members of this group should be peers, empowered to take action
where necessary, and alone if necessary. I can't imagine such a case
actually happening, but if there was a case where immediate action was
warranted, it is essential that we have more than one person able to
make the call. The module owner would be able to override the call if
necessary, but if that had to happen we'd have a pretty large
disconnect between the members of the group and thus have some larger
problems to worry about.
All of that said, given the responsibilities involved in this group, I
don't think anyone will be inclined to make a solo call if at all
possible, and I also don't expect that the authority itself will be
used very often at all. This is a group that will speak softly and
carry a big stick, but hopefully never need to use it. That doesn't
mean we shouldn't evolve their authority or empower them to act in the
absence of the owner.
-- MIke
Mitchell Baker
Mike
you've made my work here easier, since I don't have to figure out how to
have a system with "members." I'll talk to Brendan about peers.
thanks for the help
mitchell
Mitchell Baker
Mike
Mitchell Baker
Brendan on a few details. Hope to do that early next week. In the
meantime, I'd created proposed revisions of a few of the mozilla.org docs:
bug 431945: Revise Module Ownership Policy to reflect Module Ownership
module
432297: Revise owners.html to reflect non-code and module ownership
modules
Mitchell