It didn’t take long for my specification on community governance best practices to be superseded by an avalanche of community and governance-related topics that are already approved for the upcoming Ubuntu Summit. Clearly, it is something the governing bodies have been meaning to put on the agenda for some time. And basically, it looks like these topics will open up for a thorough evaluation and possibly a complete reworking of the growing community structures. It will be very interesting to see how these discussions pan out:
2006 Community Council Nominations
2006 Technical Board Nominations
Ubuntu Membership Management
New Developer Approval Process
MOTU (Universe Maintainer) Organization
Developer-only mailing list
Ubuntu Local Community Team Organization
Coordinating Local Community Teams with regards to Countries and Translations
Opening up for so many discussions at once would be unthinkable in most other F/OSS projects, but there is such a professional energy and direction within Ubuntu that this kind of massive reworking does seem feasible. As one of my informants (that’s anthropological slang for persons whom I’ve interviewed in relation with my fieldwork) said, “I don’t know if there is a ‘usually’ in anything we do yet.”
Maybe this will turn out to be an occasion to set down such traditions and practices.
