On Jan 16, 2008 1:12 PM, Keith M Wesolowski <keith.wesolowski at sun.com> wrote:
> Mr. Walker, please post a copy of your proposal here. We need a
> single consistent text for people to review and comment on. You could
> always edit your blog entry...
Based on comments received so far, I have completed a new version of
this proposal. That nature of the proposal has not changed, although
it should be much clearer what is being proposed now.
Summary
==========
The OpenSolaris community needs a new Community Group to facilitate
collaboration, design, and development of OpenSolaris-based
distributions. Because of new tools that are already available to the
community, but are rapidly reaching maturity, it is probable that
there will be a large number of community-based distributions being
created soon. In addition, the current set of Community Groups
available to sponsor projects are not properly scoped or otherwise
suitable for the nature and goals of distribution projects. As such,
the creation of a new Community Group is needed.
Scope
==========
The proposed Distribution Community Group shall be the group to which
the OGB delegates responsibility for encouraging the sustained growth
and success of OpenSolaris-based distribution projects. Distributions
that have previously been sponsored by another Community Group may
remain with that group. However, it is hoped that all such projects
will approach the contributors of this new community to seek
reassignment (sponsorship), or that if necessary, they be reassigned.
The Distribution Community Group should be the central place for
discussions and decisions regarding OpenSolaris-based distributions
and their impact upon the OpenSolaris community. To support this, it
is proposed that the OGB will allow the group to act as the initial
arbiter in dispute resolution amongst distributions and related
projects.
Some examples of dispute resolution might include: acting as an
arbiter between distribution project leaders when disagreement between
them arises, ensuring that any relevant policies and guidelines
established by the constitution or authorised governing body are
followed, and encouraging reconciliation when there are disputes.
The Distribution Community Group will actively work to ensure that
there is a healthy relationship between its sponsored projects and the
rest of the community. It will accomplish this by doing things such
as: ensuring that feedback from the group's sponsored projects is
provided to the related Community Groups and projects, encouraging the
further development and creation of tools related to the development
of distribution projects, and ensuring that projects coordinate their
releases with related Community Groups (such as the Advocacy Community
Group).
The Distribution Community Group will also work to establish unified
processes and resources to assist distribution projects in
contributing to the sustained growth and success of our community. The
usage of a common set of resources will help keep our community's
efforts from becoming fragmented. Promoting the use of these unified
resources and processes (such as a reference technology platform) will
allow individuals to be free to innovate in many areas of OpenSolaris
technology instead of reinventing the basic tools and processes that
every distribution project needs to operate.
Initial Projects
==========
The following are a series of projects that the Community Group should
begin once it is formed.
With the acceptance of Project Indiana, and the acceptance of the
initial set of core contributors, Project Indiana should be reassigned
to the new Community Group or seek re-sponsorship.
As part of encouraging the sustained growth and success of
community-based distributions, it is highly desirable that a new
project oriented towards ON Community Group developers be created.
This new project would maintain a branch of the main ON tree that
integrates patches from community developers on a rapid basis as they
are approved for inclusion. It will build the resulting source tree on
frequent basis (to be determined, with the initial goal being weekly).
This will allow community developers to quickly see and test the
results of their contributions while encouraging innovation and
providing an easy method for developers to obtain feedback from other
community members.
The aforementioned project, will also serve as a testbed for
developing unified processes and tool usage (such as the distribution
constructor) while ensuring individuals are free to innovate. The
resulting distribution, by using these tools and processes, will be a
valuable asset.
Rationale
==========
There are many reasons a Distribution Community Group is needed. One
of them is that past events have shown that none of the existing
community groups are wholly suitable for the community-wide impact
that distributions can have within the OpenSolaris community. In
addition, none of the existing Community Groups are properly scoped
for the kind of decisions that need to made to by a knowledgeable,
focused group of individuals whose primary interest relates to the
production of distributions.
Additionally, the Distribution Community Group will help establish a
clear chain of responsibility by ensuring that distribution projects
are directly responsible to a particular Community Group. This allows
a first line of arbitration, and active guidance that distribution
projects need.
Finally, the tools necessary to build a distribution are quickly
reaching maturity, and the Community Group will encourage individuals
creating or maintaining distributions to participate directly in the
OpenSolaris community to avoid some of the past problems that have
arisen.
Proposal
==========
The core of this proposal is to:
* Create a Distribution Community Group
* That existing distribution projects be encouraged to seek
re-sponsorship or be reassigned to to this new community
* That the following individuals be considered for the initial set
of core contributors with their acceptance:
o Shawn Walker (id: swalker) (proposed facilitator)
o Ken Mays (id: kmays)
o Eric Boutilier (id: ericb)
o Danek Duvall (id: dduvall)
o Dennis Clarke (id: dclarke)
o David Comay (id: comay)
o Sara Dornsife (id: sarad)
o Glynn Foster (id: gman)
o Moinak Ghosh (id: moinakg)
o Stephen Hahn (id: sch)
o Dave Miner (id: dminer)
o Ian Murdock (id: imurdock)
o John Plocher (id: plocher)
o Joerg Schilling (id: joerg)
o Bart Smaalders (id: barts)
I would ask the OGB consider this proposal two weeks from January 16th, 2008.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
[Proposal Version 3 - Updated Jan 19th, 2008 12:35am CDT]
--
Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst
http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/
"To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." -
Robert Orben
