On Sun, 2021-04-18 at 11:40 -0600, Mark Galassi wrote:
Léo Le Bouter <lle-bout(a)zaclys.net> writes:
> [...] "assemblées générales" where every member is welcome and
> has a voice?
Dear Léo,
You raise an important point that we need to be aware of even if we
decide to go with a more structured governance.
I am an astrophysicist and not a political theorist, so I can't say
authoritatively state at what level of complexity a direct democracy
would become unwieldy. I had a friend who joined a Quaker group and
described their approach to decision making --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making#Quaker-based_model
-- and it seemed fascinating, although very time consuming.
But I think that most of the time projects evolve toward a board
election approach as being more practical and saving time, and then
the role of democracy becomes one of being able to remove board
members.
I know that I do not like dealing with many things and am happy when
others do :-)
But at a lower level of complexity I like small teams that play
Cruyff-style "total football".
So is the GNU Assembly that big? Will it get that big? When does it
need to go the way of a board? How does money come in to it?
Maybe the distance between the FSF/GNU decision "boards" and the people
who actually contribute to the software grew so much because of the
very existence of such "boards".
I don't feel at ease with the current GNU Assembly because I do not
know the people in
https://gnu.tools/en/documents/roles/ and their
political ideas or vision.
I like how Rust does it with cycling leadership position often with
contributors themselves. The "Working Group" idea also, I like it.
I feel like no matter what governance exists, the GNU Assembly may end
up being just this:
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Do-ocracy
Léo