Re: governance should probably come first - past models and next steps

Hi Mark, This is a very important point and one I’ve been struggling to articulate. We have a bit of a problem in that we’re bootstrapping from an existing shallow pool of GNU maintainers (and contributors), so we’re inheriting the diversity imbalance currently present in GNU. The infiltration problem also needs to be addressed; the solution proposed by Ludo (to temporarily exclude those that are not “official” GNU maintainers from voting on foundational matters, or to restrict potential members to “long-term” “contributors”, where each of these terms need to be defined) would make that pool even shallower. This may be a cost we need to pay to avoid unsustainable growth at a time when we don’t have processes needed to keep it from eventually becoming a clone of gnu-misc-discuss. -- Ricardo