The task
As discussed in the Contributor Meetup, the new Technical Oversight Committee (“TOC”) of Open edX has recently started meeting. A key first order of business for the TOC is now to “organize and administer the annual election” of the community representatives on the committee. This process is not fully specified in the charter, so the TOC needs to design and approve it. Ed Zarecor, as chair of the TOC, has asked the new community members of the TOC to create a recommendation for the nomination and election process. Once a draft is complete, it will be presented to the whole TOC for review and approval.
Brainstorming & getting comments
To help prepare that recommendation, we would like to get the input from the rest of the community. This is why we are opening this thread, as a form of brainstorm – if you have any ideas or comments, please post them!
Prior art in other open source projects
Ignacio Despujol is also preparing a recap of prior art from other open-source projects, which he will post on this thread once he has it ready. If you are willing to help him prepare it, please say so in a reply in the current thread.
Topics of discussion
The recommendation will need to specify processes, including:
- How elections will be conducted
- Who will be eligible
- How nominations are made (who can be nominated, who can nominate, and how)
- How the voting is done
- How voting results define which nominees are selected
Goals
- Emphasize the “do-ocractic” nature of the project in the way we design the election process.
- Ensure TOC members have demonstrated commitment and contribution to the project.
- Incorporate ways to promote the core contributor & maintainer program through the election, encouraging more community members and organizations to commit time to it
Timeline
The charter specifies that community members are to be confirmed by November 1st. So we’ll need to be ready by then.