On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:54 AM, Simon Phipps <Simon.Phipps at sun.com> wrote: > > On Dec 16, 2009, at 00:43, John Plocher wrote: > >> I strongly agree with you, though. ?There is no way a centralized >> document/group can micromanage at the collective participant level, >> which is why this doc simply sets expectations and then turns the >> collectives loose to award merit as they see fit WITHIN THOSE >> GUIDELINES. > > Again, this is what I'd been assuming we all understood all along. It's up > to every "collective" to decide what justifies Contributor status;
Which contributor status? Are you talking about 1. The auth/website roles of Developer and Affiliate? 2. The constitutional role of Contributor as defined in the electorate collectives? > it's up > to the OGB to check their decision is superficially sound; the best way to > do that is to provide guidance. "Collectives" who don't agree with the > guidance then need to have their decisions checked by the OGB. If the definition of "Contributor" here is 1 (Developer/Affiliate) then each collective awards it as it sees fit, and the idea that the OGB can dictate and micro-manage the internal operational affairs of each and every collective seems absurd. If the definition of "Contributor" here is 2 (each collective awards voting rights), then you effectively force - within the framework as described above - each collective to manage the electorate. Why force every collective to take on all this bureaucracy for something that the collective itself doesn't need? It doesn't have to be so long-winded and hard. But there are key principles here: A. Each collective is free to hand out and remove Developer/Affiliate status according to its own rules and desires, with no interference (or even guidance) from the OGB. Those roles only have meaning within the individual collective they are awarded by. B. From A, there are - and should not be - any expectation of equivalent standards between different collectives, even of the same type; and this isn't a problem. C. Governance is a global concept; it thus seems to me that it should be administered globally rather than locally. D. We have decided (or are working on this basis) that electoral right should be contribution-based; contributions happen at the collective level. E. We have decided that wanting to take part in governance is a key part of awarding the vote. F. We want to eliminate bureaucracy and complexity. If we go for the model where the vote is solely determined by the award of the Contributor badge by a collective, then: - We need to add an electorate collective to the usergroup and project group types - Every collective needs to establish common criteria, and they need to be vetted by a central authority - Every collective needs to manage Contributor grants in addition to their normal business - Every collective, in addition to the bureaucratic overhead, needs to actively think about whether it needs to promote its members into central governance roles - All work related to OpenSolaris must take place on opensolaris.org It's messy, complex, and bureaucratic; I suspect most collectives won't do the work; it leaves lots of cracks for good participation to fall through. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that any model in which individual collectives award the vote is a bad model. -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
