[sakai2-tcc] TCC and votes

[Seth Theriault]

Hello,

A few people have contacted me regarding the TCC and votes. These 
comments and some cloudy weather at the beach this weekend 
spurred me to think a little more deeply about how "votes" fit 
into what we are doing.

In the debate over voting v. working, I prefer working. It would 
be shameful if this group just turned into a technical "board of 
elections" or if people believed that every proposal or thought 
or idea they had required a vote. I think there is a big 
difference between keeping people engaged and informed about 
technical issues and "approving" things.

That said, I think we do need formal votes for some things like 
releases or schedules so that decisions are actually made on 
big-ticket items. These decisions help us to communicate with the 
rest of the community so it can be more effective.

So how do we balance this?

First, our decision-making procedures probably need to evolve a 
bit. Under cloudy skies, I took another look at the Apache voting 
process:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html

and compared it to what we have written down in Confluence.

I think we have accidentally combined "formal", -1/0/+1 votes 
with lazy consensus (as defined by Apache). This is the same 
fatal flaw that exists in Sakai-Dev voting because calling for a 
vote on Sakai-Dev is the same as calling for lazy consensus since 
there were no binding votes. But now we have binding votes in the 
TCC and perhaps we want to exercise them judiciously.

To do this, we might want to make a small semantic change in how 
we operate: Being careful about using the word "vote" in our 
discussions. For the most part, we just want lazy consensus, not 
a formal vote, but we need to be clear about it. A good example 
of this clarity is Chuck Severance's recent dev list message 
about a Pluto library upgrade. The result was some nice 
discussion back and forth, and then some work got done.

If we do want a vote on something (perhaps a lazy consensus 
proposal got a lot of questions or there is real disagreement 
about what to do) we need to be prepared to go through the more 
rigid process, most notably the 72-hour voting window. We also 
want to be very clear and precise about what the vote is about.

Second, if you think something needs a vote, feel free to call 
for it and manage it yourself, subject to the requirements. The 
Chair and Vice-Chair have NO monopoly on deciding what proposals 
float to the top for votes or approval. They are available to 
help you administer a vote or even act as a sounding-board if you 
are not sure what to do (although I think the group is probably 
the best sounding board). 

Seth