Re: Requested addition to section 7.1

On 12/18/2016 03:25 PM, Michael Champion wrote:
>
> The gist of this thread seems to be that some advocate moving away from the current governance model where the Director – “who shall have the ultimate authority for all Consortium activities” according to the member agreement -- delegates most decisions to W3M.  It might be time to discuss alternative ways to structure decision making at W3C, but be aware that this is a potentially profound change that goes beyond updating the process document.   I think there are roughly 3 ways to organize decision making at an organization such as W3C:
>
> 1. Some individual, usually the founder, has final authority over all activities and delegates it as he/she sees fit (the current model)
> 2.  Some group selected based on “merit” hold authority to decide issues that cannot be resolved by consensus (IETF and Apache come to mind)
> 3. The wider membership selects a Board of Directors that have authority to hire/fire staff and determine how technical decisions are made (most SDO’s operate this way, I believe)
>
> Is it even plausible that we could find a Director with the credibility to make decisions stick AND who has the time to devote to W3C day to day operations so that decisions such as this would not be delegated to W3M? If not, are options 2 or 3 (or others) worth considering?

I think W3C, for the most part, operates as #2 with the arbiter "group"
represented by the Director and anyone to whom he delegates. Imho that's
a fine model. I'm not in favor of #1 for W3C: our goal is always to
operate on consensus, and I don't think basing process on a theoretical
model that doesn't hold to that reality of how we operate is useful to us.

~fantasai

Received on Thursday, 22 December 2016 08:32:49 UTC