Foundation Advisory Committee reorganization proposal

fwiw, I think this reorg makes a lot of sense: The separation into "business" and "technical" I personally never really liked as it seemed to create a "managerial" (decisions on "what") vs "footsoldier" (decisions on "how") split that were not befitting a project originally/at heart a technical community effort and not a top-down-managed one.

What I don't quite agree with is one specific proposal assessment, though: "Election fatigue seems to be a reason we failed to get full representation, so by having just one election for the Foundation each year, we believe there will be more participation.": Is it really possible there's election fatigue at the second election round already? Election fatigue also doesn't explain when there's no candidate. Personally I believe the problem is more that the impact of the committee(s) is not really clear: Key questions that may be worth while answering explicitly in such reorg, too: What can one achieve if serving on a committee? How much time does it cost a rep? What value does a community rep bring to the community? What benefits does a representative get in turn?

@baentsch Great questions!

Is it really possible there's election fatigue at the second election round already? Election fatigue also doesn't explain when there's no candidate.

I meant it as shorthand for the idea that 4 elections a year (2 each for the Foundation and Corporation) mean there's a lot of messaging around the process and people tend to lose interest as a result. By doubling the terms, we're effectively reducing the number of Foundation advisory committee election slots. We're also deliberately picking September to space the Foundation elections from the Corporation elections.

Personally I believe the problem is more that the impact of the committee(s) is not really clear: Key questions that may be worth while answering explicitly in such reorg, too: What can one achieve if serving on a committee? How much time does it cost a rep? What value does a community rep bring to the community? What benefits does a representative get in turn?

These are good questions and somewhat harder to answer. The Foundation doesn't offer much in terms of extrinsic motivation, but I do hope our representatives are intrinsically motivated. The opportunity to further the OpenSSL Mission is something we can offer.

We probably do need to do a better job making sure the committee and it's work is visible so that more people are motived to run for a slot.

I support this proposal (note: I'm currently on the Foundation BAC representing distributions).

I do believe the four elections {Foundation, Corporation} x {TAC, BAC} make things a little unclear. I know what the difference between those is, but I don't assume everybody else does. Fewer committees are better in this case, although this change does introduce an inconsistency between the Foundation and the Corporation side (only the Foundation plans to merge the committees at the moment).

+1 from me. The distinction/overlap between BAC and TAC always seemed a bit unclear so merging them seems to make sense.

Yes, what Peter said. (I'm on the Corp BAC, so I don't really have a horse in the race here.)