[Elections] Election Team Kickoff

[Lex Spoon]

As I posted earlier [1], I don't consider the current "organization" to
be legitimate at all.  People who have watched this situation over the
years might notice that the "guides" were supposed to be temporary, and
that the "castaways" were supposed to be temporary...  but nowadays, the
"coordinators" now seem to consider themselves enshrined by default?

I warned the castaways that this would happen, that they themselves
would come to think of themselves as leaders given a continuing power
vacuum.  Despite declarations that they do not actually consider
themselves self-styled leaders, etc., [2], things are the same 10 months
later.  The castaways web site still lists the original "all your base
belong to us" email as their mission statement.

I would suggest the Debian Constitution [3] as a great starting point
for the Squeak community.  It has worked well for them, and they have a
similar organization to the Squeak group.  Here's an article I wrote
earlier on the idea, back when I was burning 5-10 hours per week to help
with Squeak organization issues (time, I fear, I no longer can
contribute):

	http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/45.html

The first change to think about is to elect leaders every year or maybe
two, without term limits (open source volunteering is inherently limited
anyway!).  I also like the idea we've explored of having a release
manager, and would further suggest that the release manager gets
elected, too.  Elections provide accountability.

Overall, the current setup is illegitimate and is ill-advised anyway,
despite the quality of the individuals involved.  For a healthy community,
there's no better time than the present to improve our organization.


-Lex

[1]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-February/088316.html

[2]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-February/088335.html

[3]
http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution