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  1. title: Proposal: Addressing the term “meritocracy” in the governance statement
  2. url: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/OQlS6-gUBLQ/u0Em5XKjCAAJ
  3. hash_url: 8322131f44f453460494b9a24850300b
  4. Hello Governance folks,
  5. As part of the our work on diversity and inclusion within Mozilla
  6. communities, Emma Irwin and I have a proposal to rearticulate the main
  7. principle of Mozilla’s governance statement. This proposal does not seek
  8. to change how Mozilla is governed, only how we talk about how Mozilla is
  9. governed, which may be reasonably be regarded as contentious.
  10. Issue
  11. The first line of Mozilla’s governance[0] states, “Mozilla is an open
  12. source project governed as a meritocracy.”
  13. The use of the term “meritocracy” to describe communities that suffer
  14. from a lack of diverse representation is increasingly seen as
  15. problematic: it proceeds from an assumption of equality of opportunity.
  16. There is now quite substantial evidence [1] as well as opinion [2] that
  17. we should challenge this usage.
  18. At the same time, I believe that the rest of the articulation of how the
  19. project functions (“authority is distributed to both volunteer and
  20. employed community members as they show their abilities through
  21. contributions to the project.”) remains a reasonable description of how
  22. we aspire to work. It asserts that people’s contributions are what
  23. counts, not their employment affiliation or the personal relationships
  24. they may have. I believe we are able to acknowledge that this approach
  25. remains imperfect. Mozilla does support other measures (through
  26. outreach and recruiting, policies and process improvements and tooling)
  27. that can help address the biases inherent in a system where people gain
  28. authority based on their past delivery.
  29. To sum up:
  30. -Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge
  31. evident bias in representation in the project.
  32. -The word “meritocracy” itself has become a bone of contention which is
  33. unhelpful to us.
  34. -Meritocractic principles remain highly desirable and should be explicit.
  35. -We should also acknowledge the importance of measures we take to debias
  36. how authority is distributed.
  37. Proposal
  38. I seek to avoid making this an unnecessarily complex (or indeed
  39. contentious) change, and after discussing with a number of interested
  40. people, I would like to suggest this as the new summary of our
  41. governance principle.
  42. "Mozilla is an open source project. Our community is structured as a
  43. virtual organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both
  44. volunteer and employed community members as they show their ability
  45. through contributions to the project. The project also seeks to debias
  46. this system of distributing authority through active interventions that
  47. engage and encourage participation from diverse communities."
  48. I believe that this is a change that minimises disruption and reflects
  49. how the leadership of the project seek to govern it.
  50. It’s customary to gain consensus among the main stakeholders for any
  51. change before it is proposed on Governance. In this case, however, I
  52. feel that the number of stakeholders is potentially vast. I believe
  53. that there should be a period of review in the governance forum (a
  54. week?), and would welcome guidance from moderators on what they believe
  55. would be appropriate.
  56. Many thanks,
  57. Patrick
  58. 0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/
  59. 1.
  60. https://www.zdnet.com/article/think-open-source-is-a-meritocracy-it-is-but-only-if-no-one-knows-youre-a-woman/
  61. 2.
  62. https://mfbt.ca/some-garbage-i-used-to-believe-about-equality-e7c771784f26?gi=c64efee22070