Hey, > No, a Sun badge shouldn't be sufficient. But it shouldn't an order of > magnitude more difficult than becoming a voting member of gnome.org. I > was able to vote in GNOME elections based on QA and user help type > activity years ago, probably before I knew how to properly pronounce > GNOME. I don't remember it being as difficult and I don't see gnome.org > as being too dilute. On the other hand, my first request to become a > voting member of opensolaris.org went out nearly a year ago but I didn't > understand the magical process so Ghee and I created a process. As part > of this proposed process, we made being a "contributor" a prerequisite > to becoming a "core contributor" so I'm in the queue with all of the > other newcomers. (Hopefully venting so they won't have to.)
This is one of the things I want to change about the constitution, but haven't yet had time to write up into a more formal amendment. The people who do the work get to decide the direction of the project. Period. I trust those people. They're doing it day in, day out. They know the system better than I could. If I have a desktop multimedia question I'm sure as hell going to talk to Brian. If I had a compiz question I'm going to talk to Erwann. If I DTrace question, I'd *fully* trust all the DTrace guys 100% to know what's best. Similarly for Garrett and drivers, or John Plocher about ARC. They are solely the people who should be deciding things, regardless of whether we have contributors or core contributors. Those decisions don't really need a vote - just get on with it, and make it happen. We'll all be better off. However, we *do* need to make opensolaris.org an open, positive and welcoming community - encouraging the new people to join the project, get involved, and have fun. If we don't, we'll lose. Membership, I believe, is a core part of that. I'd very much like to see the contributor/core contributor/emeritus model removed to be replaced by general membership - what we currently have just causes confusion. People who are interested and excited about being part of the OpenSolaris project can submit their name for membership, based on their contributions and visibility to date *within* opensolaris.org. If accepted they'll be able to vote in the OGB elections. Does that mean they'll get to decide the direction of DTrace? Hell no. If they start writing code, or leading some other project, they'll absolutely get a say there. The benefits? Unification - rather than all working in silos, wondering why your contributions haven't been recognized by X, Y or Z community group, you're part of something wider, more inclusive and working on the same set of goals. Glynn
