Re: Arabeyes Charter Proposal

["Chahine M. Hamila" <mch at chaham dot com>]

Isam Bayazidi a *crit :

> On Thursday 14 March 2002 01:06 am, Mohammed Elzubeir wrote:
> > Isam, Anything else to add?
> >
> > I would like to have a vote on this sometime soon, so we can have a core
> > meeting scheduled, next week. Everyone whip out your schedule books
> > [I know Nadim's schedule of course ;)].
>
> Well, As I thought .. after Nadim commented in the charter I had another
> point of view regarding it ..
>
> Well first I think tha the Charter is needed to reduce time spent discussing
> already agreed upon, and issues already decided .. on the other hand, I see
> things in the Charter that should not be there, such as the diffinisions of
> roles and responsabilities ..

It is Isam, it is the application of it which must not be strict. For example,
you have to define a parting vote in order to avoid deadlocks. And roles simply
have value in terms of reduction of noise. Big issues will be voted anyway, but
minor issues must not create noise.

> I think the duties and TODO for the members are
> flexable,

Yes, this is the point. The application must be flexible, while the existence
garantees an umbrella for bad times.

> note that Nadim (who is the PR guy) did some very good development,
> Chahine (R&D) did good PR with people in Tunisia, Moe had been doing a great
> job in coordinating the KDE translation, and I did some PR and so as well..
> and it had been so fun with good outcome ..
>
> Now, responsabilities change upon the time availabilitiy and the raise of new
> issues to deal with .. The better way to manage this is to make a TODO list
> that is checked upon every 2 weeks.. and is flexable ( with no hard feelings
> at all) to move duties from one person to another acording to performance and
> other factors ..

This is a possibility indeed. It is part of the flexible application. Still,
roles are good to be there in order to solve minor deadlocks. Show me one
important project in the world with a flat structure. They're all doomed,
because a sum of individuals always creates noise that goes against
productivity.

>
>
> Now things that SHOULD be mentioned is that the core SHOULD have
> monthly,bi-monthly,weekly, or whatever meetings .. I see he Charter
> mentioning an ellection every 2 years, and mentioning the Core Meetings :-)
>
> The way I see the charter now is that is more of a constitution than a
> charter .. I think it should not be that specific (note  D.3),

D.3 in particular offers each one of us a protection against the inclusion of a
member we don't want, while making it still lesser than a veto, since a veto
paralizes any process. It's not a veto given to everyone against inclusion of
new members, but it's close to it. Inclusion and exclusion of members have to be
drafted very carefully.

BTW, to Nadim, no, the parting vote replaces the veto. The parting vote doesn't
paralize the team for the dictative will of one person, while at the same time
prevents deadlocks due to a tie.

Salaam,
Chahine