And now I expect Spam Karma to eat this.

Your position is not clear, what would make you less motivated to get involved ?

Your examples are nice but I find them very similar either to what we have in the NM process or to what I suggest: “exams” are questions like Tasks and Skills in the current process. Right now all DD have the same extended powers and we rely on anyone to self-assess that they have the right skills to maintain a given package. The “membership committee” is nothing more than my “Community Managers”.

I like perl, and I like the philosophy about proudly stolen elsewhere. There are so many precedents for loosely-affiliated but strongly regulated social organisations that Debian could copy from. For example, a professional accounting body. First step is to be an associate member, requiring a one of a number of recognised degrees, and a simple introductory exam, plus references from existing members. After an apprenticeship of two to three years, and a series of exams, you become a member. To keep membership, you must complete a certain amount of professional development points every three years; a broad range of activities count, such as giving presentations, mentoring, have articles published, or even documented self-study programs. Debian has nothing like this at the moment.

If you want to go into public practice (sign off an audits, offer tax advice) you need to complete some specific exams, but you have the same voting rights as other members. (This reminds me of what DD status should be like). Also, all accountants with public practice licence can equally serve all clients, but there are strict ethical rules about moving clients between accountants. Sound like the NMU guidelines, a bit. Note that there is no restriction on someone whose experience is entirely with automotive clients taking on a hotel client, but the code of practice requires the accountant to self-assess if they have the rights skills. Ultimately, serious mistakes here could be the subject of a membership review by the membership committee.

The association is run by an elected committee, who have the right to audit membership status (deviations from the code of ethics, failure to meet professional development points). Very experienced members or members who have distinguished themselves can be elevated to Fellow, but this doesn’t carry more rights.

So elevation to voting membership is based on exams and apprenticeship. Some special rights are limited to those who have taken additional certification, but once those rights are granted, the powers are wide, limited by self-regulation. Members are bound by a voluntary code of conduct, which is reviewed by a membership committee. Membership can only be maintained by following a program of “professional development” which is broadly defined.

I understand it’s a sensitive subject but I don’t think re-election are needed as long as the system works. If you want explicit safety measure, we could say that the DPL could trigger a re-election for example exactly like the developer body can by starting a GR.

I believe that some continuity in this set of people is even more desirable than in any other team so I’d rather not have regular re-elections.

Anyway, if you want regular election, we will end up with the problem that non-technical members will end up deciding who are the skilled technical members that should be community managers. That’s acceptable as last resort when the system goes wrong but not really as default mode of selection.

One way to reduce the problems could be to say that a community manager can only grant a right that he also has on the basis that having this right means that he’s probably able to judge if someone would make good use of that right.

This is completely dangerous. you simply can’t hope that the highest level of power is a group of people, even elected at first place. The highest level of power has to be the developpers, the ground, people.

I do not mean “if it goes wrong”, I mean in any case.

There is, more generally, a real motivation behind the fact that every democratic system regulary draws again the roles trough elections, and not only on a per-abuse case.

I will try to write a more complete post to planet on this topic very soon.