Ben Rockwood wrote: > Secondly, I personally believe the tone of the document is far too informal. > It reads more like a README than a constitution. >
That`s intentional. The idea was to strip down to the basics of what we think is working now or how things are actually working in practice and then build up from there as needed (and if needed). It`s not necessarily complete. It needs to reflect the community as it grows and changes. I think the intention a couple of years ago was to create a document that would consider a large number of possibilities. And as a result the current constitution is quite long and complex. And although it is very detailed and complete, very few people have actually read and digested it, and that`s especially true the further you get from the center of the community. Explaining all the detail in the current constitution to new people is challenging, whereas I think new people are looking for a much simpler articulation of what the community is and how it functions. > In regards to the whole: > * The document does not describe the rights or responsibilities of anyone or > anything. Further, I do not see sufficient power delegated to anyone. My own view on this is that too much centralized power is harmful, it doesn`t fit how the community naturally functions, and the OGB is not resource holding implementation body. That`s why I prefer a decentralized approach. I think it`s more realistic given the current status of the project and community. We have an outline for a very basic structure -- a few roles and a few categories for groups. The people doing the work in the various groups will naturally bubble to the top as leaders in any given area, and there are processes for them to become members if they want to apply. And there are processes for elections and basic community functions. What more do we need? I don`t see a need to document everything in terms of rights and responsibilities from the top down with a community as distributed as this one is. Also, we tried to think about what needed even more process than the current constitution, or at least more centralized process. And so we centralized the project creation process and membership itself so the bar for those functions would be applied equally to everyone. Those two functions will be implemented by OGB committees. Jim -- http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/
