Ben Rockwood wrote:
> Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>> Such a position would severely constrain the OGB's interactions with
>> other bodies, and may ultimately destroy its ability to act effectively.
>>
>> Sometimes discussions with 3rd parties *have* to be private, and if
>> you're not willing to have the discussions in private, then the other
>> parties will just refuse to talk to you. Sometimes the 3rd party
>> here will be Sun. Sometimes it might be other organizations, such as
>> security organizations (CERT), or other vendors who are contemplating
>> opening up to Solaris, but aren't yet ready to disclose those plans
>> to the world-at-large.
>
>
>
> No.... 3rd parties do not have to be private. If they do, they can go
> elsewhere. OPENsolaris. OPEN source. OPEN! We can't do things
> otherwise, and if we do we are doomed to be a sham. CLOSEDsolaris is
> dead, OPENsolaris is the future.
>
> This stabs at the heart of whats wrong with the relationship between
> Sun and the community... we don't do closed, we don't do private.
> Good or bad. Right or wrong. For better or worse. OPEN. Thats what
> transparency is, and thats what this board must be.
>
> This is a board, I am one voice among six others and I will abid by
> the ruling of this body and seek compromise if I must, but it will be
> wrong should it come to that.
>
> benr.
>
> PS: Garrett, you're awesome, this is not aimed at you but the idea
> that is forwarded by many. I understand the point made by all, I
> really do, and if I worked at Sun I might even embrace it, but its wrong.
Actually, this has little to do with my employment at Sun. Other open
source projects have found the need to have private communications
between subsets of their members. Glynn pointed out Gnome. In my
experience with NetBSD, there are several "private" communications
channels that are used. This doesn't prevent the project itself from
being open, but it does allow for times when folks want to have
conversations without the aid of a bullhorn.
I do understand the idealism behind your thoughts, really. But I just
think its impractical to think that 100% of the activities involved with
any organization will ever be 100% public. There will always be
conversations in hallways, private e-mails, and private telephone
calls. Remove one channel, and another one will be used in its stead.
Just as not all development will ever be truly open. There will always
be projects which come to OpenSolaris as basically "complete", where the
community doesn't hear about it until long after the project was
started, and possibly not until after it is ready to integrate. We can
complain, and argue that this is not an ideal situation, but that won't
stop it happening. (And indeed, almost every development effort that
comes to OpenSolaris will have at least some portion of its work done
behind closed doors, for some reason or other. My own SDcard stack is a
great example -- I've been wanting to publish the source code for a
couple of months now, but I still don't have the legal approval to do
so. The problem in this case isn't Sun, but rather Sun's concerns about
the licensing requirements needed from the SD card organization.
Eventually the code will be open, and I've tried to be as public as I
can about what I'm doing, but ultimately, the development effort itself
was not truly open. Heck, I can't even distribute *binaries* right now,
for the same reason that I can't distribute the source code!)
What having private lists does, is enable two things:
1) institutional memory of those conversations
2) allow for 3rd parties who may have good intentions, but want
control over timing of their actions, or want to receive private advice
about how to interact with the organization, to do so.
Again, if you exclude both of those, you will severely curb the
effectiveness that the OGB can be.
And, going back to your point about Sun Solaris versus OpenSolaris. If
those 3rd parties talk with Sun, rather than the OGB, then you're also
hurting the effectiveness of the board, and actually making OpenSolaris
look subservient to Sun. Anyway, I've voiced my opinion for now, so
I'll leave it that.
-- Garrett
