Proposal: Addressing the term “meritocracy” in the governance statement

[Patrick Finch]

Hello Governance folks,

As part of the our work on diversity and inclusion within Mozilla
communities, Emma Irwin and I have a proposal to rearticulate the main
principle of Mozilla’s governance statement. This proposal does not seek
to change how Mozilla is governed, only how we talk about how Mozilla is
governed, which may be reasonably be regarded as contentious.


Issue

The first line of Mozilla’s governance[0] states, “Mozilla is an open
source project governed as a meritocracy.”

The use of the term “meritocracy” to describe communities that suffer
from a lack of diverse representation is increasingly seen as
problematic: it proceeds from an assumption of equality of opportunity. 
There is now quite substantial evidence [1] as well as opinion [2] that
we should challenge this usage.

At the same time, I believe that the rest of the articulation of how the
project functions (“authority is distributed to both volunteer and
employed community members as they show their abilities through
contributions to the project.”) remains a reasonable description of how
we aspire to work.  It asserts that people’s contributions are what
counts, not their employment affiliation or the personal relationships
they may have.  I believe we are able to acknowledge that this approach
remains imperfect.  Mozilla does support other measures (through
outreach and recruiting, policies and process improvements and tooling)
that can help address the biases inherent in a system where people gain
authority based on their past delivery.

To sum up:
-Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge
evident bias in representation in the project.
-The word “meritocracy” itself has become a bone of contention which is
unhelpful to us.
-Meritocractic principles remain highly desirable and should be explicit.
-We should also acknowledge the importance of measures we take to debias
how authority is distributed.



Proposal

I seek to avoid making this an unnecessarily complex (or indeed
contentious) change, and after discussing with a number of interested
people, I would like to suggest this as the new summary of our
governance principle.

"Mozilla is an open source project.  Our community is structured as a
virtual organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both
volunteer and employed community members as they show their ability
through contributions to the project. The project also seeks to debias
this system of distributing authority through active interventions that
engage and encourage participation from diverse communities."

I believe that this is a change that minimises disruption and reflects
how the leadership of the project seek to govern it.




It’s customary to gain consensus among the main stakeholders for any
change before it is proposed on Governance.  In this case, however, I
feel that the number of stakeholders is potentially vast.  I believe
that there should be a period of review in the governance forum (a
week?), and would welcome guidance from moderators on what they believe
would be appropriate.

Many thanks,

Patrick

0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/
1.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/think-open-source-is-a-meritocracy-it-is-but-only-if-no-one-knows-youre-a-woman/

2.
https://mfbt.ca/some-garbage-i-used-to-believe-about-equality-e7c771784f26?gi=c64efee22070

[mhoye]

On 2018-05-24 9:17 AM, Patrick Finch via governance wrote:
>
> -Meritocractic principles remain highly desirable and should be explicit.

While I support this proposal, I disagree with this assertion. A core
function of a "meritocratic" system is to obscure the locus and nature
of authority - to hide who makes the real decisions about what
constitutes merit behind the idea of merit as an abstract idea.

I don't think we should cling to that idea at all. We can do better.

- mhoye

[Patrick Finch]

Let me clarify what I intended by the statement: that quality of
contribution to a project influences distribution of authority within
that project remains desirable.  Although in practice, this principle
generates systems with many demonstrable failings that need addressing,
I'm asserting that the principle is a hygiene factor for someone to
decide if they wish to invest their time in a project, and a part of
good governance.

I don't disagree with anything you say above about systems.
"Meritocratic principles" is therefore probably an unfortunate term that
I should not have used. Apologies.

Patrick

[Patrick Finch]

On 5/24/18 9:51 PM, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
> As merely a fan of Mozilla, I applaud this effort, and I hope I'm not
> out of place by voicing 3 ideas:
Thank you Neil, for your very constructive ideas.

> 1. Should it should be explicit that the organization not only "seeks"
> diversity, but also /values/ it?  (Many organizations seek diversity
> or the appearance of same, but I suspect that Mozilla truly values a
> diversity of perspectives and contributions, in addition to the social
> justice aspect, and seeks to increase and support that diversity.)
>
Perhaps we could articulate the theory of why the project values
diversity, this is predicated on it both being the right thing in
itself, and that it serves to make project stronger. A possible addition
might be:

"Mozilla has a commitment to collaboration among diverse communities
working together for the common good.  This is both central to the
identity of the project, and an important factor in its success."

I like your points about aspiration and humility.  I think they do
inform this proposal, but could indeed come out more clearly.  My
central proposal is, as you say, to address "meritocracy" which is
troubling.  Would you have a counter-proposal, or do you think we should
make this change first and then consider the evolution of the governance
statement?

Patrick

[recalci...@gmail.com]

Patrick,

You admit this is just window dressing. This would not address the problem highlighted in the pull request study you cited. It is designed only to make people feel better about themselves while doing little. To conform word choice with popular political trends, nothing more.

There is no conflict between use of the word "meritocracy" and diversity. Open source is inherently more meritocratic, diverse, and egalitarian than proprietary software. I regularly work with developers from all over the world. There are reasonable efforts underway through outreach and scholarships to boost diversity and accessibility.

This proposal goes beyond that though. There are some people with extreme political views bent on changing language in pursuit of their own personal power. In exchange, they offer you the opportunity to feel good that you are "doing something" about "diversity" by conforming to their language policing. This is simply a ploy to cement the political authority of the aforementioned movement. It does not advance diversity.

This movement is against meritocracy because they politically believe meritocracy is inherently biased, more specifically that they are entitled to their own power and influence within projects simply by virtue of having the right political views. They use control of language and cooperation of well-meaning people to achieve their power.

As you can see from the first reply to your comment, you will never completely appease these people. Even in making your proposal you got called out for using unapproved nomenclature. To them, short of putting them directly in charge as dictators, there is nothing that will make Mozilla not systematically oppressive, it will never be enough.

The line must be drawn here.jpg.

There is no compelling reason to change the usage of the word meritocratic in the governance documents.

There are compelling reasons not to give into language policing, at best does nothing to advance diversity, at worst it empowers a fringe group of authoritarian radicals who are hell-bent on giving themselves power and influence to dictate even more.

Mozilla already drove out it's CEO for having unapproved opinions, donates money to far-left groups, and has adopted the consensus left solution to net neutrality. No one seems to care what effect the previous might have on viewpoint diversity. I still use Firefox though because it's good code, that is what matters to me, not the virtue signaling.

No one has responded to a number of serious, systematical technical issues raised in the previous post, here: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/ckPh2OmLYqE/_pmRhRW8CQAJ.

At a certain point Mozilla will need to decide whether it's a open source software project or a political organization.


RO

[recalci...@gmail.com]

> https://www.zdnet.com/article/think-open-source-is-a-meritocracy-it-is-but-only-if-no-one-knows-youre-a-woman/

Study has been called into question.

The paper concludes that “for insiders…we see little evidence of bias…for outsiders, we see evidence of gender bias: women’s acceptance rates are 71.8% when they use gender neutral profiles, but drop to 62.5% when their gender is identifiable. There is a similar drop for men, but the effect is not as strong.”
In other words, they conclude there is gender bias among outsiders because obvious-women do worse than gender-anonymized-women. They admit that obvious-men also do worse than gender-anonymized men, but they ignore this effect because it’s smaller. They do not report doing a test of statistical significance on whether it is really smaller or not.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-about-that-github-study/

[Patrick Finch]

Hi RO,


Thanks - there’s a lot in here.   I am grateful you surface these
concerns, I am sure many share them.I've tried to summarise your points
- if you feel I’m mis-representing them, please call me out.


1. You’re concerned that this change is a sop to the politically
militant, and that this is a slippery slope.

2. The proposal itself is cosmetic and does little or nothing to advance
diversity which you believe is not a problem in open source, at least
not relative to proprietary software development.

3. Focusing energy here is a distraction (or worse) to Mozilla as an
open source project.



On point 1, my perception is that you don’t disagree with the proposal
itself, but your concern is about the context it’s made in.  My concern
is that “meritocracy” carries ambiguity and baggage, and that ambiguity
seems to extend even beyond the field of open source governance at this
point.  Better, in my view, to be very clear about what we intend -hence
the wording of the proposal. My sincere hope is that people who believe
wholeheartedly in “meritocracy”, and conversely people who think it’s
become a harmful concept, would all agree with the proposed statement of
how authority should be distributed in the project.  I invite you now,
and in future, to scrutinise the proposed wording to determine if you
feel a line is in danger of being crossed. i.e. does the wording conform
to what you consider good about “meritocracy”? Does it represent a good
system?


At the same time, I can easily understand many feel a strong affiliation
with the term itself.  For 20 years, it has represented for many a new,
better way of collaborating and it’s possible to feel a great attachment
to it.  I don’t have a good answer for that, and nor is there a neater,
tidier conception to offer.



On point 2, you say that the proposal is “window dressing”.  Sure -
let’s call it that. But window dressing exists for a reason, doesn’t it?
It has a signaling function and serves to invite people in.  That is
entirely the idea here: that “meritocracy” has become associated for
some with a less welcoming or open community. Let’s change that signal.


Thank you for pointing out that there are reasonable efforts underway to
boost diversity and accessibility.  I hold these to be important in
debiasing this system. I don’t agree that open source projects are more
diverse than proprietary software development: it would appear that the
systems that exist in open source somehow exacerbate the problem of
diversity. Considering diversity in gender representation, data shows
open source lagging the rest of the industry.  FLOSS 2013 [0] is
obviously rather old now, but more recent data [1] (what is now the
CHAOSS D&I working group of which Mozilla is a part [2]) appears to
confirm this too. I share your instinct that open source should be more
diverse, and yet, it does not seem to be.



On point 3, I’m not asserting the priority of this over other issues and
there may more important and/or more urgent issues to raise. If you wish
to make the case for them, please do so, but they remain other issues,
and we can certainly discuss more than one thing at once here.  I take
this point as more of a meta-comment on governance, rather than anything
specific to this proposal. Reasonable?



Best regards,


Patrick




0. https://floss2013.larjona.net/results.en.html

1.
https://osleadershipsummit2017.sched.com/event/9Khn/diversity-in-open-source-projects-susan-wu-midokura-daniel-izquierdo-bitergia-nicole-rutherford-intel

2. https://github.com/chaoss/wg-diversity-inclusion

> _______________________________________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance

[Patrick Finch]

Hi RO,


Thanks for sharing.


The post highlights distinctions between gender bias against insiders
versus outsiders. It has implications for projects that are predicated
on addressing this kind of systemic bias, such as Blind Code Reviews.  I
would encourage anyone with an interest in the topic to read the piece
you linked to, it seems to offer a more rigorous reading of the study
than other coverage I've seen.


We can still assert that women are under-represented in open source
projects compared to the rest of the industry (see my last post) and
that there are systemic factors behind that.  The Mozilla team working
on D&I in community is already deeply engaged with them [0].


Patrick




0. https://opensource.com/article/17/9/diversity-and-inclusion-innovation

[recalci...@gmail.com]

> 1. You’re concerned that this change is a sop to the politically
> militant, and that this is a slippery slope.

I believe the proposed change of language is intended to bring it in line with a very specific political ideology/worldview.

> 2. The proposal itself is cosmetic and does little or nothing to advance
> diversity which you believe is not a problem in open source, at least
> not relative to proprietary software development.

My point was that open source by itself lends itself to diversity by it's very nature.

We can always do more. Translations are a good place to start for most projects.

I support all kinds of diversity in open source and would like to see more diversity in open source.

I do not believe changing words to align with very specific political ideologies, whatever ideology that is, contributes to substantive diversity.

> 3. Focusing energy here is a distraction (or worse) to Mozilla as an
> open source project.

Focusing energy on changing language to appease activists who have it out for certain words is a distraction, not just from development of code but from actual diversity efforts.

Until there is real data to show increased diversity in projects that reject meritocracy as a formal value/policy I don't think a change should be made.

[recalci...@gmail.com]

> We can still assert that women are under-represented in open source
> projects compared to the rest of the industry (see my last post) and
> that there are systemic factors behind that.

I would agree.

I support reasonable efforts to address under-representation and the systemic factors behind them.

I think this is appropriate, even a duty, for large open-source projects with the resources to devote some of those resources to addressing these issues.

I am open to arguments that the value of meritocracy is a systemic factor and de-prioritizing meritocracy as a value will help address under-representation in a real way.

I am not convinced though that the concept of meritocracy itself is a systemic factor in under-representation. I can see how meritocracy could be misused based on how merit is assigned and/or defined. I can see how that could be used against people, for a variety of reasons including discrimination. I also think this is mitigated at least partially by the transparency of open source, the scarcity of resources in open source, and the ability to fork open source projects.

I am also not convinced that de-prioritizing meritocracy as a value will help address under-representation in a real way. I think what is meant by meritocracy in an open source project should be defined and done so in a way that promotes diversity and inclusion, but not done away with. I would like to see data from organizations that followed this path and how effective it was at diversity and what effect, if any, it had on output.

I worry that saying we have to abandon meritocracy as a value, given the general understanding of that word, to promote diversity and inclusion sends the wrong messages. First that the people the project is trying to reach will never be able to participate on a level playing field with existing contributors, which is horribly condescending and factually not true. Second that Mozilla is lowering it's standards in any way, that's what some people will believe and like it or not it affects perception of the project.

[mhoye]

On 2018-05-28 12:44 AM, recalcitrantowl via governance wrote:
>
> My point was that open source by itself lends itself to diversity by it's very nature.

This position isn't supported by any of the available data. In fact, the
opposite is the case:

https://www.wired.com/2017/06/diversity-open-source-even-worse-tech-overall/

https://readwrite.com/2013/12/11/open-source-diversity/

The handful of larger Open Source communities and conferences that have
bucked that trend (PyCon, the Rust community, a handful of others) have
done so by implementing and enforcing codes of conduct, being deliberate
about avoiding exclusionary language and through active outreach and
accommodation efforts to include marginalized groups and minorities.

- mhoye

[Emma Humphries]

On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 12:04 AM recalcitrantowl via governance <
gover...@lists.mozilla.org> wrote:

> I am open to arguments that the value of meritocracy is a systemic factor
> and de-prioritizing meritocracy as a value will help address
> under-representation in a real way.
>

Many of the arguments against meritocracy and understanding of how it is
not a useful organizing or governance principle are collected here.​

http://post-meritocracy.org/meritocracy/

-- Emma

[mhoye]

On 2018-05-28 1:04 AM, recalcitrantowl via governance wrote:
> I am open to arguments that the value of meritocracy is a systemic factor and de-prioritizing meritocracy as a value will help address under-representation in a real way.

Let me make two.

The first starts with these assumptions: that notions of value are
arbitrary, and our knowledge as individuals is imperfect and shaped by
our experiences.

Both are, I think, self-evidently true: different people, as individuals
or groups, value different things, and none of us have perfect
knowledge, either of the past, present or future.

What that means, though, is that in any attempt to actually codify this
idea of "merit", if we get right down into the specific nuts and bolts
value judgements where the real-world decisions come from, what we're
really doing is shackling ourselves and our organization to our past
successes and present-day ignorance.

Another way to say that is that the problem we're trying to solve here -
the disaster we want to avoid - is having our blind spots engineered
right into the fabric of our organization and culture. That's what
"meritocratic" systems really are, once you dig into questions like "who
decides what merit means" and "who grants authority in this system and
how". They're completely calcified, a vision of the future that's never
much more than a chromed up repaint of some nostalgic, half-remembered
past.

Put bluntly the idea of a meritocratic system is inherently reactionary,
inherently backwards-facing, and as the saying goes past performance is
no guarantee of future results.

> I worry that saying we have to abandon meritocracy as a value, given the general understanding of that word, to promote diversity and inclusion sends the wrong messages.

The second is that I have bad news about the general understanding of
the word.

Michael Young coined it in 1958, in a book called "Rise Of The
Meritocracy", a profoundly dystopian satire that tragically almost
nobody in tech has read. To all reports, he's angry to this day that
nobody got the joke; in 2001 he tried to salvage the situation, saying
in an interview that "It is good sense to appoint individual people to
jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to
have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without
room in it for others."

Which isn't a bad way to describe what we're trying to avoid here;
having Mozilla become a place anchored in the past, with no room in it
for others.

- mhoye

[Patrick Finch]

Hi RO,


From what you write, I believe we share many objectives, including to
safeguard the project’s long-term reputation and health and to increase
diversity within the project.  We agree that the concept of meritocracy
could introduce bias against under-represented groups (although I think
you believe that it tends not to in practice, I argue there is evidence
to say it does).  Where we diverge: you believe that continuing to
enshrine “meritocracy” in Mozilla’s governance statement is important to
the project’s reputation, I believe we can make a clearer statement of
the principle, without inferring the whole system.


You clearly hold that the term “meritocracy” is important and beneficial
- many people would agree with you.  I’m attempting to preserve the best
of it in the proposed statement. Clearly, people contributing to a
project need to know that their abilities and effort will be recognised
and rewarded.


But I am also asserting that “meritocracy” is understood differently by
different people.  You don’t appear to accept that the term has negative
connotations for anyone other than a constituency you don’t necessarily
believe should be represented (“activists” / “those with a very specific
ideology/worldview”).  Minimal desk research demonstrates that the term
is also increasingly understood by many to mean something closer to its
original coinage [0].


From my point of view, you have not commented if you feel the proposed
replacement language corresponds with your idea of a good system of
governance, only argued about the context in which its made.  I don’t
believe that the proposed wording aligns with any ideology. It’s plain
and less open to interpretation. I’d encourage you to comment on that.


You argue that open source lends itself to diversity by its nature.  I
agree that it should do, but it has been demonstrated not to, and the
concept of “meritocracy” as a justification for existing power
structures is known to introduce bias [1].  I don’t accept that this is
a dramatic change that would distract from the real work of promoting
diversity. For one thing, it is a modest proposal (you described it as
“window dressing”, after all!), and secondly, from discussing with those
who work on diversity and inclusion at Mozilla, I am very confident they
feel this is a helpful change to their work.


Your argument that we should not address the question of “meritocracy”
in our governance statement until its proven to promote positive change
is somewhat circular. Obviously, if every project takes that view, no
change will ever happen, will it?  Let’s neutralise the issue and lead
by being clearer about what we stand for.


Patrick




0.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/world/michael-young-86-scholar-coined-mocked-meritocracy.html

1. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.543

On 5/28/18 6:44 AM, recalcitrantowl via governance wrote:
>> 1. You’re concerned that this change is a sop to the politically
>> militant, and that this is a slippery slope.

> I believe the proposed change of language is intended to bring it in line with a very specific political ideology/worldview.
>

>> 2. The proposal itself is cosmetic and does little or nothing to advance
>> diversity which you believe is not a problem in open source, at least
>> not relative to proprietary software development.
>

> My point was that open source by itself lends itself to diversity by it's very nature.
>

> We can always do more. Translations are a good place to start for most projects.
>
> I support all kinds of diversity in open source and would like to see more diversity in open source.
>
> I do not believe changing words to align with very specific political ideologies, whatever ideology that is, contributes to substantive diversity.
>

>> 3. Focusing energy here is a distraction (or worse) to Mozilla as an
>> open source project.
>

> Focusing energy on changing language to appease activists who have it out for certain words is a distraction, not just from development of code but from actual diversity efforts.
>
> Until there is real data to show increased diversity in projects that reject meritocracy as a formal value/policy I don't think a change should be made.

[Henri Sivonen]

On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 4:06 PM, Patrick Finch via governance
<gover...@lists.mozilla.org> wrote:
> To sum up:
> -Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge
> evident bias in representation in the project.
> -The word “meritocracy” itself has become a bone of contention which is
> unhelpful to us.

I agree that we should lose "meritocracy" from the governance
description. A while ago, on this list, I linked to
https://webmink.com/essays/open-by-rule/ and before doing so debated
with myself whether I should include a disclaimer about terminology
that hasn't aged well. I ended up not doing so and got Warnocked.

I think we should communicate two things that have previously been
supposed to be covered by "meritocracy" and are still reasonable
aspects of good Open Source governance:

1) Positive participation in an area of the project is generally a
prerequisite for authority over that area of the project. We expect
module owners to have contributed to the area they are module owners
of prior to becoming module owners. (This has the downside that
authority needs the kind of time commitment that may be hard to
sustain unless paid to commit the time, which introduces bias in terms
of people who are able to commit a lot of time to the project despite
not being paid to do so. Still, the next item wouldn't really work
without some relation to demonstrated positive participation. It
doesn't mean that people who haven't committed the time to have formal
authority shouldn't be heard.)

2) Authority in the Open Source project shouldn't be tied to being
paid by a particular entity. (Firefox development is now much more
concentrated to being paid by Mozilla than it was e.g. in 2004, but
co-development is a generally healthy thing in Open Source. Therefore,
I think we should keep our governance structure open to more
co-development again in the future and be careful not to close off
governance participation to current co-developers.)

A third point that we historically haven't been good at but have
become better at of late is:

3) Authority in an area of the project should involve continued
participation in that area of the project. (We now have the module
owner emeritus status, which acknowledges past participation while
withdrawing current authority.)

--
Henri Sivonen
hsiv...@hsivonen.fi
https://hsivonen.fi/

[Patrick Finch]

On 5/30/18 11:27 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:

>
> 1) Positive participation in an area of the project is generally a
> prerequisite for authority over that area of the project. We expect
> module owners to have contributed to the area they are module owners
> of prior to becoming module owners. (This has the downside that
> authority needs the kind of time commitment that may be hard to
> sustain unless paid to commit the time, which introduces bias in terms
> of people who are able to commit a lot of time to the project despite
> not being paid to do so. Still, the next item wouldn't really work
> without some relation to demonstrated positive participation. It
> doesn't mean that people who haven't committed the time to have formal
> authority shouldn't be heard.)
>
> 2) Authority in the Open Source project shouldn't be tied to being
> paid by a particular entity. (Firefox development is now much more
> concentrated to being paid by Mozilla than it was e.g. in 2004, but
> co-development is a generally healthy thing in Open Source. Therefore,
> I think we should keep our governance structure open to more
> co-development again in the future and be careful not to close off
> governance participation to current co-developers.)
>

> 3) Authority in an area of the project should involve continued
> participation in that area of the project. (We now have the module
> owner emeritus status, which acknowledges past participation while
> withdrawing current authority.)
>

I think these are all very good points.  Do you propose that we
formalise them, or generally make them more explicit, in the governance
statement? (i.e. would you modify the proposal?)

Patrick

[Emma Humphries]

Let's add a fourth item to Henri's list on the role of
authority/leadership/maintainership in OSS to elevate and sponsor the next
generation of authority/leadership/maintainership, and to emphasize that
the next generation of OSS leadership should come from underrepresented
groups since they carry knowledge of the blind spots and owches that the
projects we work on have.

-- Emma

On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 2:28 AM Henri Sivonen via governance <
gover...@lists.mozilla.org> wrote:

> On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 4:06 PM, Patrick Finch via governance
> <gover...@lists.mozilla.org> wrote:
> > To sum up:
> > -Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge
> > evident bias in representation in the project.
> > -The word “meritocracy” itself has become a bone of contention which is
> > unhelpful to us.
>
> I agree that we should lose "meritocracy" from the governance
> description. A while ago, on this list, I linked to
> https://webmink.com/essays/open-by-rule/ and before doing so debated
> with myself whether I should include a disclaimer about terminology
> that hasn't aged well. I ended up not doing so and got Warnocked.
>
> I think we should communicate two things that have previously been
> supposed to be covered by "meritocracy" and are still reasonable
> aspects of good Open Source governance:
>

> 1) Positive participation in an area of the project is generally a
> prerequisite for authority over that area of the project. We expect
> module owners to have contributed to the area they are module owners
> of prior to becoming module owners. (This has the downside that
> authority needs the kind of time commitment that may be hard to
> sustain unless paid to commit the time, which introduces bias in terms
> of people who are able to commit a lot of time to the project despite
> not being paid to do so. Still, the next item wouldn't really work
> without some relation to demonstrated positive participation. It
> doesn't mean that people who haven't committed the time to have formal
> authority shouldn't be heard.)
>
> 2) Authority in the Open Source project shouldn't be tied to being
> paid by a particular entity. (Firefox development is now much more
> concentrated to being paid by Mozilla than it was e.g. in 2004, but
> co-development is a generally healthy thing in Open Source. Therefore,
> I think we should keep our governance structure open to more
> co-development again in the future and be careful not to close off
> governance participation to current co-developers.)
>

> A third point that we historically haven't been good at but have
> become better at of late is:
>

> 3) Authority in an area of the project should involve continued
> participation in that area of the project. (We now have the module
> owner emeritus status, which acknowledges past participation while
> withdrawing current authority.)
>

> --
> Henri Sivonen
> hsiv...@hsivonen.fi
> https://hsivonen.fi/

[Emma Irwin]

Hi Emma & Henri,

Thanks very much for sharing these important points. They feel like very valuable responses to an even bigger question : ‘What are the attributes of Inclusive Open Governance?’. It’s a topic very much on my radar, and our D&I in Open Source Community Call on June 27th has this exact title!

I want to propose that we use that call (in part) to kick off the discussion with others thinking about open governance, with your proposals as a starting point. We did a similar exercise for community leadership recently[1] , which has been very valuable as well. How does that sound as a way forward for these particular suggestions?

Thanks,

-Emma Irwin


https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/what-s-next-for-volunteer-leadership-in-2018-shared-agreements/25091

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 5/30/18 12:01 PM, Emma Humphries wrote:
> Let's add a fourth item to Henri's list on the role of
> authority/leadership/maintainership in OSS to elevate and sponsor the next
> generation of authority/leadership/maintainership, and to emphasize that
> the next generation of OSS leadership should come from underrepresented
> groups since they carry knowledge of the blind spots and owches that the
> projects we work on have.

I strongly agree with the last clause, but I have to admit to some
qualms about coupling that to the specific term "underrepresented
groups", because I think a lot of people have preconceived notions (not
always identical) of what it means.

As a concrete example, I don't think "people over 50 with somewhat
failing eyesight" is commonly considered an "underrepresented group",
and yet: (1) it is, in the context of web browser development and (2)
members of this group definitely carry the sort of knowledge you
mention: young people with good eyesight tend to make all the text too
small.

To be clear, I agree that we want a lot more participation from groups
that are not participating right now. I suspect (but please correct me
if I'm wrong) that we also agree that this applies to more than just the
typical set of groups involved in US identity politics. Examples could
include the elderly, people in countries with oppressive regimes, people
who are poor, people in rural areas. I'm sure there are others I can't
think of right now, which is a problem in itself. Anyway, I worry that
the term "underrepresented groups" is irrevocably coupled in the minds
of many to the specific context of identity politics in the US and that
will affect both perception of our stance on the matter and actual
implementation of the policy in detrimental ways.

-Boris

[Emma Irwin]

HI Boris,

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts - and what I see as a good challenge to expand beyond our default thinking about inclusion governance (and who we’re missing) with global context.

Your email (and Emma & Henri’s) makes me feel optimistic and hopeful that the signal of this proposal is already making us more intentional and deliberate in thinking about who we’re missing, why that is, and why that matters to our work, and mission. In our D&I research last year, we identified a number of underrepresented demographics to consider in our work, of which a few you mentioned. I feel optimistic we’re already on our way.

I’ll mention again my intention to keep this discussion open (separate from the proposal), with a kick-off discussion on our ‘Inclusive Open Governance call’ on June 27th. I’ll ensure at least one panel question comes from what has been shared here - and if you can’t make it, you have my commitment to follow-up with you after that call with recordings - and maybe some proposed next steps for this discussion. How does that sound?

Thanks again!

-Emma Irwin

[Henri Sivonen]

On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 12:51 PM, Patrick Finch <pfi...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> On 5/30/18 11:27 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>
>>

>> 1) Positive participation in an area of the project is generally a
>> prerequisite for authority over that area of the project. We expect
>> module owners to have contributed to the area they are module owners
>> of prior to becoming module owners. (This has the downside that
>> authority needs the kind of time commitment that may be hard to
>> sustain unless paid to commit the time, which introduces bias in terms
>> of people who are able to commit a lot of time to the project despite
>> not being paid to do so. Still, the next item wouldn't really work
>> without some relation to demonstrated positive participation. It
>> doesn't mean that people who haven't committed the time to have formal
>> authority shouldn't be heard.)
>>
>> 2) Authority in the Open Source project shouldn't be tied to being
>> paid by a particular entity. (Firefox development is now much more
>> concentrated to being paid by Mozilla than it was e.g. in 2004, but
>> co-development is a generally healthy thing in Open Source. Therefore,
>> I think we should keep our governance structure open to more
>> co-development again in the future and be careful not to close off
>> governance participation to current co-developers.)
>>

>> 3) Authority in an area of the project should involve continued
>> participation in that area of the project. (We now have the module
>> owner emeritus status, which acknowledges past participation while
>> withdrawing current authority.)
>>

> I think these are all very good points. Do you propose that we formalise
> them, or generally make them more explicit, in the governance statement?
> (i.e. would you modify the proposal?)

I meant writing these down, yes. However, it appears that
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/module-ownership/
has been updated while I wasn't paying attention, so it's already
closer to capturing the above points than I thought. Point #2 doesn't
appear to be covered explicitly, though.

(While you have write access to /about/governance/ , it would probably
be worthwhile to remove the part about super-reviewers per the recent
dev-platform thread.)

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 6/1/18 7:36 PM, Emma Irwin wrote:
> I’ll ensure at least one panel question comes from what has been shared here - and if you can’t make it, you have my commitment to follow-up with you after that call with recordings - and maybe some proposed next steps for this discussion. How does that sound?

Emma,

That sounds great.

Thank you,
Boris

[mitc...@mozilla.com]

Sometimes good words and good aspirations get tarnished with history, and need to be set aside. I personally aspire to many aspects of our work being a meritocracy. And the original meaning I took for meritocracy in open source meant empowering individuals, rather than managers, or manager's managers or tenure-based authority. I still long to develop these things.

However, it's now clear that so-called meritocracies have included effective forms of discrimination. This might be hidden bias, where some aspect of identity causes a person's contributions to be routinely devalued. It might be over discrimination or harassment. It might be threats that minimize the contributions even offered. Whatever the cause, open source "meritocracies" suffer from these problems -- open source projects tend to have less diversity than other software organizations.

Fairly or not, the word "meritocracy" has come to signal systems where there is little effective restraint on perpetuating discrimination. It may even become a code-word for organizations that resist the need to build diverse and inclusive organizations.

I personally long for a word that conveys a person's ability to demonstrate competence and expertise and commitment separate from job title, or college degree, or management hierarchy, and to be evaluated fairly by one's peers. I long for a word that makes it clear that each individual who shares our mission is welcome, and valued, and will get a fair deal at mozilla -- that they will be recognized and celebrated for their contributions without regard to other factors.

Sadly, "meritocracy" is not that word. Maybe it once was, or could have been. But not today. The challenge is not to retain a word that has become tainted. The challenge is to build teams and culture and systems that are truly inclusive. This is where we focus.

So in my role as Owner of the Governance module, I'm confirming that mozilla will retire the word "meritocracy" from our self-descriptions. I'll also take the opportunity to confirm that mozilla is fundamentally committed to making participation and leadership available to all.

Mitchell

[mitc...@mozilla.com]

[Patrick Finch]

On 6/7/18 11:39 PM, Mitchell Baker via governance wrote:
> Sometimes good words and good aspirations get tarnished with history, and need to be set aside. I personally aspire to many aspects of our work being a meritocracy. And the original meaning I took for meritocracy in open source meant empowering individuals, rather than managers, or manager's managers or tenure-based authority. I still long to develop these things.
>
> However, it's now clear that so-called meritocracies have included effective forms of discrimination. This might be hidden bias, where some aspect of identity causes a person's contributions to be routinely devalued. It might be over discrimination or harassment. It might be threats that minimize the contributions even offered. Whatever the cause, open source "meritocracies" suffer from these problems -- open source projects tend to have less diversity than other software organizations.
>
> Fairly or not, the word "meritocracy" has come to signal systems where there is little effective restraint on perpetuating discrimination. It may even become a code-word for organizations that resist the need to build diverse and inclusive organizations.
>
> I personally long for a word that conveys a person's ability to demonstrate competence and expertise and commitment separate from job title, or college degree, or management hierarchy, and to be evaluated fairly by one's peers. I long for a word that makes it clear that each individual who shares our mission is welcome, and valued, and will get a fair deal at mozilla -- that they will be recognized and celebrated for their contributions without regard to other factors.
>
> Sadly, "meritocracy" is not that word. Maybe it once was, or could have been. But not today. The challenge is not to retain a word that has become tainted. The challenge is to build teams and culture and systems that are truly inclusive. This is where we focus.
>
> So in my role as Owner of the Governance module, I'm confirming that mozilla will retire the word "meritocracy" from our self-descriptions. I'll also take the opportunity to confirm that mozilla is fundamentally committed to making participation and leadership available to all.
>
> Mitchell
>

Thank you Mitchell, and to everyone else for their contribution to the
discussion.


In addition to the proposal, six further issues have been raised.  I’m
summarising them as:

1. Positive contribution in an area of the project is generally a

prerequisite for authority over that area of the project.

2. Authority in the Open Source project shouldn't be tied to being paid
by a particular entity.

3. Authority in an area of the project should involve continued

participation in that area of the project.

4. We should form a stance on the proactive sponsorship of
under-represented groups to future leadership positions.

5. The term “meritocracy” should be removed also from the Roles & Resp
governance page [0] per this discussion (this was pointed out to me
off-list)

6. The Super-Review Role should be removed from the Roles & Resp
governance page [0] per another on dev-platform[1].


Issues 1 and 3 are deemed to be reasonably well covered.  2 is not
directly addressed in the previous proposal and I have updated the
wording of the new proposal, below.  4 will be debated further in a
discussion convened by Emma Irwin. 5 is addressed below. Removing the
Super-Review role (6) has been apparently agreed in dev-platform but not
discussed here nor acted upon.


I will therefore take these three actions:


A. To replace the current text on the governance main page[2] with:

Mozilla is an open source project.  Our community is structured as a
virtual organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both

volunteer and employed community members irrespective of employment
affiliation as they show their ability through contributions to the

project. The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing
authority through active interventions that engage and encourage
participation from diverse communities.

B. To replace the current introductory paragraph on the Roles and
Responsibilities page [0] with:


The Mozilla project is governed by a virtual management team made up of
experts from various parts of the community. Some people with leadership
roles are employed to work on the Mozilla project and others are not.
Leadership roles are primarily granted to individuals based on how
active they are in the community, as well as the quality and nature of
their contribution. This is a resilient and effective way to guide our
global community. The different community leadership roles include:


C. And to remove from the Roles and Responsibilities page [0]:


Super-ReviewersSuper-reviewers are a designated group of strong hackers
who review code for its effects on the overall state of the tree and
adherence to Mozilla coding guidelines. Super-review generally follows
code review by the module owner, and the approval of a super-reviewer is
generally required to check in code. More information on code review can
be found in the mozilla.org code review FAQ.



I’ll action these as soon as possible with the Mozilla.org team.


Many thanks,



Patrick



0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/roles/

1.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/fCJMf9hBGHQ
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21topic/mozilla.dev.platform/fCJMf9hBGHQ>

2. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/

[lsha...@mozilla.com]

It has taken me a bit of time to reply here, but I wanted to say this: I am very proud to be associated with an organization that evolves in this manner and see that it must. Thank you to Patrick and Emma for pushing this change forward and to Mitchell for being a founder who carries the vision forward with such grace.

With great appreciation,

Larissa

[larissa...@gmail.com]

It has taken me a while to comment here but I wanted to say - I am very proud to work for and with an organization and community that has made these choices. Thank you to Patrick and Emma for driving this forward and to you, Mitchell, for being a founder who evolves and learns and speaks so eloquently on what we need to do and be next.

Proud to work with you all

Larissa

On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 12:33:39 AM UTC-7, Patrick Finch wrote:

[Robert Kaiser]

[apparently my newsgroup message from May 27 didn't make it, so trying
to re-send over the email side of things]

Patrick Finch schrieb:

> The first line of Mozilla’s governance[0] states, “Mozilla is an open
> source project governed as a meritocracy.”
>
> The use of the term “meritocracy” to describe communities that suffer
> from a lack of diverse representation is increasingly seen as
> problematic: it proceeds from an assumption of equality of opportunity.
> There is now quite substantial evidence [1] as well as opinion [2] that
> we should challenge this usage.

The word definitively got a bad reputation nowadays in circles we try to
attract to be able to increase diversity, so I agree it's a good idea to
remove it while keeping the essence of what we actually mean by it.

Also, back in the days when I started to become a contributor or was new
in the project, I remember having a hard time understanding what that
term actually meant - and I'm sure I was and am not alone with that.

> "Mozilla is an open source project.  Our community is structured as a
> virtual organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both

> volunteer and employed community members as they show their ability

> through contributions to the project. The project also seeks to debias
> this system of distributing authority through active interventions that
> engage and encourage participation from diverse communities."

That sounds to me like a good way of putting it (though we can discuss
how much it currently reflects reality, I think it's a good target to
set for us there). It still clearly says what we mean, and emphasizes
that we actively strive for diversity, which nowadays can't be said
enough. I find it even much better to understand for someone like a
20-year-old me than the version with "meritocracy" in it which always
was a stumbling block for my understanding back then. ;-)

Thanks for looking into that and trying to improve those documents!

Cheers,
KaiRo

[Emma Irwin]

A quick update on #4

'Inclusive Open Governance'[1] call will happen on August 1st (speaker scheduling delayed it a little bit).

I have included a question based on a conversation with Henri, if anyone else would like to contribute a question please email me directly and I'll do my best to include it. Thanks!

1. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Diversity_and_Inclusion_for_Communities_and_Contributors/DI_Call_08_01_2018#June_27.2C_2018_-_Inclusive_Open_Source_Governance

On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 12:33:39 AM UTC-7, Patrick Finch wrote: