On Wed, Oct 03, 2007 at 10:25:35AM -0600, Nicholas Solter wrote: > OGB members, do you agree or disagree with this characterization?
While I'm not sure about the analogy, I agree for the most part that it's how we've been operating. We have in fact done some minimal legislation, and I hope we'll do a little more before our term is up (Alan's ARC/consolidation bill and the proto-CG bill I still owe us, to name two). We've definitely done little or no executive work, mainly because the Constitution limits us to the type of judicial role you describe. We do, however, have a few other defined roles, such as approving or denying the formation of new Groups; this is typically filled by regulatory agencies in modern states. All this means, as you point out, that the Groups need to be more assertive if they're not satisfied with what's going on. We've yet to hear a single appeal from anyone, which seems surprising given the amount of discord out there. Then again, this might be a good thing - the need to express one's grievance coherently to a possibly skeptical board might be enough to encourage less confrontational means of resolving conflicts. While I'm open to suggestions for "improving communication", it's not clear to me why it's necessary to periodically remind Core Contributors to read the Constitution - these are the people who approved it in the first place only 6 months ago! The strong-CG model isn't an OGB interpretation; it's stated explicitly in sections 7.1 and 8.6; to wit, the OpenSolaris Community is "held to be composed of" the "self-govern[ing]" CGs, and "the OGB shall not make decisions for" them. In plain language, the Groups *are* OpenSolaris and the OGB has very limited ability to meddle in their affairs. If I were going to make an analogy with the government of nations, I'd say this is more akin to the Commonwealth than a federal system - the Commonwealth can suspend or expel members, just as the OGB can terminate Groups - but any kind of analogy is bound to be flawed. -- Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!" FishWorks "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
