Bill Sommerfeld wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 13:29 -0700, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>
>> I think this is basically writing down what many of us believe to
>> be the case, but haven't explicitly put into writing yet, leading
>> to some confusion.
>>
>> I propose the OGB issue a simple statement along these lines:
>>
>> The OpenSolaris Governing Board hereby designates the OpenSolaris
>> Architecture Process and Tools community as the architectural review
>> board for OpenSolaris. All changes requiring architectural review
>> that are integrated into the master gate of an OpenSolaris consolidation
>> must be reviewed first by the OpenSolaris Architecture community or
>> a committee established by the OpenSolaris Architecture community that
>> meets openly as described in the OpenSolaris constitution.
>>
>
> I think the high order bit -- everything touching open-source code needs
> open review -- is right.
>
> I have some concerns about the transition -- PSARC has been holding open
> meetings and open reviews of fast-tracks for quite some time but hasn't
> to my knowledge formally been (re)chartered by the opensolaris
> architecture community to hold such reviews.
>
> IMHO the OGB needs to specifically charter the review body and give it
> goals. simply leaving it as up to the "opensolaris architecture
> community" to work out the details (including the appeals path) may
> leave us with a period of time when nobody is formally able to approve a
> change to opensolaris.
>
> so how do we change engines in mid-flight without crashing the plane?
>
+1.
I think that, for the near term, PSARC should be explicitly chartered by
OpenSolaris. I'm not sure about the other ARCs, but I have little to
do with them. ;-)
There are still transition issues to be resolved... the tools
infrastructure, the fact that currently you have to be a Sun employee to
be a PSARC member (or at least as I understand it, although apparently
I've set precedent by being an _intern_ while not being an employee...
but then I have SWAN access as a contractor.)
I imagine it would be fairly easy to move the SAC infrastructure we need
to an opensolaris.org host.. we could then allow for non-employee
membership, etc. We have some of this infrastructure in place for code
reviews, and voting, already.
There is also the issue of the cases that are still midflight, some
open, some not. Some decided, some not.
Further, I think there is real justification for having some ability to
have "closed" cases. Some material information in weighing the case may
be of a confidential nature ... such as security related information, or
cases that are intended to facilitate future business directions of
important contributors. I agree that it should be an extraordinary
effort to run a closed case, and every effort should be made to make it
open (perhaps by blanking out customer names, etc.), but I don't think
its a good idea to prohibit the idea of cases with restricted views.
(And by restricted view, I mean restricted to certain persons, who may
or may not be employees of a certain OpenSolaris contributor. This will
happen in other areas too, like security related bugs. Other open
source organizations use a vetting process to grant extra privileges to
identified senior/trusted members of their community. We may need
something similar for ARCs. We _will_ need something similar for bug
tracking.)
Perhaps the final specifications and decisions of all cases should be
made public... I'm just not entirely certain that the ability to hold
private conversations leading up to those decisions should be entirely
forbidden. (Difficult, and strongly discouraged, yes.)
I know that there is s sentiment that is somewhat popular that we should
not consider what is important to Sun in our planning... that Sun's
needs shouldn't play a role. But what I want to point out is that if
the process is hostile to Sun, and Sun chooses to walk away from OS.o,
many (I'd even venture to say *most*) of the current OS.o contributors
would not be able to participate, or would have to greatly reduce their
level of participation. So from a purely pragmatic point of view, it
makes sense to try to make allowances for the special needs of our
biggest (by far!) contributor.
-- Garrett
> - Bill
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ogb-discuss mailing list
> ogb-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/ogb-discuss
>
