TSC Membership Diversity

Thanks Todd for contributing to the debate. Your proposal overlaps others though so I'd like you to separate the different aspects so they can be more effectively managed:

#1 should go under TSC election - Who may vote ?

#2 should be put into a new topic called something like "TSC membership limit per organization"

#3 should go under TSC Size

Thank you.

I support this initiative. No more than 25% means no more than 2 with the current 11 member structure. 

The simplest approach would be amending section 4.a.ii of the charter with the verbiage dropped from section 4.a.i:

“… provided that no company (including related companies or affiliates under common control) shall have more than three (3) votes on the TSC.”

To add to Brian's point above, I think implementing this would require companies to have some level of internal coordination, as to who should run, which we do not have today.

Indeed, contrary to what some might think, the result of the latest election is due to the fact IBM did NOT coordinate. We let anyone decide for themselves whether to run or not and I literally discovered who was running when the nominations got disclosed, along with everyone else.

I think this would effectively make people on the TSC company representatives, which I don't think is what we want.

As much as I appreciate Brian's comments, I think his view is extremely naive at best.  To suggest that Hyperledger figure out approaches that enhance the ability for TSC members to act independently and be accountable to the public, not their employers is nearly laughable.  Employers pay people to act on their behalf.  Hyperledger doesn't pay any TSC members.  TSC members almost certainly perform their duties on their employer's time.  As such TSC members will always be accountable to their employers first and foremost and to the public to the extent their employer allows.

As to Arnaud's comment, I never meant to imply that there was any collusion on anyone's part.  I simply point out that at the formation of the TSC it was felt necessary to have diversity, so I have to ask, what changed after the startup period that makes the limitation "extraordinarily bad"?

The issue is best left to IBM to address - to keep the their current TSC members because of the organization's rules and because the people will be effective in their elected role or decide that it's better for the community that some should step down to allow others space on the TSC.  I have seen a negative reaction from a couple of people outside the Hyperledger community to IBM's perceived role ("dominance") in Hyperledger. I don't think that is a commonly held view, but if it is, this election likely hurts Hyperledger overall more than the contributions of the individuals, and IBM might want to address that.

If the rules are to be changed, I would definitely not want an organization to limit individuals from running, but rather limit those appointed to the TSC based on the election results. How an organization chooses who runs is up to the organization - grassroots or internally agreed upon - is up to them.

I'm more concerned about the project diversity of the TSC than the company diversity.  How many TSC eyes are on Iroha or Burrow, for instance?

If we focus on core DLTs (and not cross-project things like Ursa or Transact), I only see two TSC members who have non-Fabric contributions:  Dan and Nathan.  Is this enough?  If we are going to try to modify the TSC composition to enforce some diversity, I'd much rather do it at the project level by letting the maintainers of active, post 1.0 projects that are large enough pick a TSC member(s) according to some formula.

Whilst it is good to get diversity of views on the TSC, the current governance and election processes do not make that easy.

To give Fabric its due, it is the project that has the most number of contributors; IBM has contributed mightily to Hyperledger. However, Hyperledger is more than Fabric. 

There is a possibility of groupthink (all maintainers/developers, mostly associated with one project or company). There is common culture that further skews views (company culture etc.)-  There is also a question of public perception (i.e. outside Hyperledger) about the fairness and decentralization of the TSC.

My contention is that 30% electoral participation amplifies this phenomenon; as committed and  organized (on the election) groups skew the electoral results; in the case of the 2019 elections, allegedly fair and square. I say allegedly as there is no transparency of results and Condorcet is remarkably opaque and quite convoluted.

I believe the truth lies somewhere between the pure view that Brian espouses and the view that employers control individual views.

As one of the activities for the next election (and through the year), I suggest that we need to raise this turnout. Low turnout can be a result of apathy, indifference or a sense of futility (according to studies). Futility is the most worrisome one, as it is a sense that one's vote will not count.  The 80-20 rule has been cited to defend the low turnout. I do not buy this argument, unless there is data backing this.

There are standard techniques for raising turnout. Engagement through the year is important as we must work on the lists, the reachability etc. through the year. Already there are many who are eligible. 

Giving enough of a leadtime to work on the lists is important as time pressure and other factors contribute to the general feeling of urgency and hence difficulty in organizing  the elections. The fact that a single person has to run this election does not make matters easier.

In short the proposal is have techniques to raise the turnout.

Enforcing diversity is not the right solution to get to a diverse community. This will alienate people from contributing and will make people wonder if they were elected for the sake of diversity or because they were actually elected. Is this really any different from reaching quotas in our goal to reach gender equality in technology? I have heard from a number of white males who feel disillusioned with their ability to advance in their careers and from a number of females who feel like they were only promoted to reach some quota (even if they rightly should have been promoted).  

What other steps can be taken to get diversity in our community? Diversity in the community will lead to diversity in the TSC. 

Getting back to the concern regarding over representation from a single entity, I first have to repeat that this is somewhat of a moot point because looking at the history of TSC decisions one can clearly see that this wouldn't have mattered in any way because the vast majority of the votes were unanimous.

But for the sake of trying to find a middle ground I just thought: How about setting the limit to 49%? This would ensure no single entity has full power which would address the crux of the matter.

Practically speaking though, this is not without some challenges either. It requires a clear definition of a "single entity" and a way to determine which entity a person is affiliated to, just to name a few.

In W3C people are required to disclose their affiliation. As far as I know we don't have anything like that. This would then become a requirement to be able to implement anything like that. At least for those who run for the TSC.

Another comparable:

The CNCF has a rather... elaborate TOC election process that allows the projects, the "end-user" community, and the Governing Board to appoint seats:

https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/process/election-schedule.md

I can see how such a process might be an improvement over now, at the cost of considerable complexity.  Thoughts?

I understand that only about 20% of members voted.  The easiest way to influence the composition of the TSC is to ... vote!