On Dec 12, 2007, at 1:43 PM, Glynn Foster wrote: >> And we've actually been ignoring the requirements in Sections 7.10 & >> 8.2 which require us to set up private mailing lists for each >> community >> to have their Core Contributors debate the merits of each nominee >> before >> the public vote. > > Strongly disagree about this, FWIW - having a set of available > mailing lists for > core contributors encourages private discussion about things other > than who to > vote in as core contributor. I'm glad we've been ignoring it :)
Real open source projects work by separating technical/working discussion from interpersonal/private discussions. If you don't have a private list for the latter, then those discussions will still happen but in a less regulated manner -- they will be limited to hallway conversations and random subsets of private email addresses, inevitably leaving outside contributors out of the discussion by accident (if not on purpose). This is a well-known solution to a well-known problem regarding distributed work teams. At the same time, a clear separation of purpose for lists allows people to put an end to private discussion of public issues far quicker than happens otherwise. OpenSolaris would be a lot better off if it had "dev", "use", and "private" lists for each community group (and no project-specific or "discuss" lists). Doing that forces communities to act like a social community (and rearrange themselves when, in fact, they are not socially matched at all). ....Roy
