Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>> I'm not sure if this is expected or not... as I'm not a member of the
>> Advocacy group.
> You are more than welcome to get involved. We are always looking to
> grow. We welcome people of all languages and cultures and people with
> all levels of technical and non-technical skills.
>
>> But the number of Core Contributors in that group is double that of
>> its nearest competitor (ON, 48 CCs) and *quadruple* that of its next
>> nearest (Tools, 22 CCs.
>>
> And I'd like to make it much bigger, but we don't have any resources
> so we are just growing organically.
>
> There are well over 4K people on 60 or so Advocacy-sponsored lists,
> and we will grow much larger over time. Think tens of thousands in
> dozens of countries -- especially when the various OpenSolaris binary
> distros mature. Currently, the majority of people are coming from User
> Groups around the world, so that number will grow substantially and
> many of us are actively working to make that happen. I realize that
> many people in this OpenSolaris community on these lists on this
> website think that this is the only OpenSolaris community. It's not.
> OpenSolaris is actually a global community of communities now, and
> there is significant OpenSolaris activity occurring off this main
> website and in ways not directly connected to this website or its
> governance. There are many reasons for that, of course, but my main
> goal is to connect as many of the OpenSolaris communities as possible.
> And it's working. More and more of these communities are creating
> relationships with the main site in the form of projects, UGs, and
> list participation. It's very cool.
I agree that this is very cool. Developing the greater OpenSolaris
community is of benefit to all of us.
>
>> As a member of the larger group I do worry what this will mean when
>> it comes time for the election. It certainly seems that something
>> akin to gerrymandering may be occurring, or at least have the
>> *appearance* of occurring.
>>
>
> That's an amazing statement. It's meaningless without substantiation,
> though. Do you have any?
The numbers speak for themselves. What is the point of having so many
CC's, if not to overwhelm the polls? I'm not saying that this was the
intention, but it certainly (to me at least) can have that *appearance*.
Part of the reason I'm concerned is that I've had a belief that we were
basically running as a meritocracy. I'd be a bit unhappy if the core
technical leadership of OpenSolaris (both in and out of Sun) ultimately
got steamrolled in any kind of election because the Advocacy CG has
several times the number of CCs as the CGs where the actual "work" of
developing (and not just coding, but also tools, i18n, and docs) the
product occurs.
>
>> While the constitution certainly doesn't require it, I wonder if
>> anyone else besides me would find it useful if a couple of the
>> Advocacy CCs can explain why that group should need so many CCs?
>
> No.
>
> We will do that when the Constitution is changed to require that from
> all CGs, and that will require a community-wide vote. Under no
> circumstances will we do otherwise. We run our own affairs under the
> Constitution, and we are a CG in good standing under the Constitution.
> We trust that other CGs are doing the same, and we stay out of their
> business.
I'm not demanding anything, only *asking*, in the hopes that an
explanation would allay my concerns. The defensive posture that you
seem to be taking suggests to me that maybe my concerns are justified.
Are they? Well you won't tell me, and that's fine ... but in the
absence of a response I'm left to make my own conclusions. (Whether
those conclusions mean anything in the broader scope is an entirely
different matter. Right now, with the membership the way it is, it
would be very hard for any group to push the project in a direction that
the Advocacy group didn't like.... )
Btw, I posted originally with the view that maybe, just maybe, there
really is a good reason for there to be so many CCs in that group. I
was hoping for a clarification, and frankly wasn't expecting the
defensive posture.
>
>> Are the CC's in that group *really* core contributors, or are they
>> just people who occasionally pipe up on mailing lists?
> Please define "real" and point to the approved definition of "real"
> and why you feel you can make that assessment for another CG.
>
>> I've lived under the belief that core contributors should be people
>> who are very actively helping the community achieve its goals.
> We are. And we have demonstrated that. Clearly.
It isn't clear to me that all 48 core contributors have contributed so
heavily to warrant a CC grant. It isn't clear to me, quite frankly, as
an external viewer, that there is that much work that the Advocacy group
has done. But then again, I admit fully I don't have a full view into
how the Advocacy CG identifies CCs. I *hope* that CC grants require
some active form of contributorship and not just participation. (Just
because I participate in e-mail discussions on the crypto lists, for
example, doesn't mean I should be a core-contributor for that CG.)
>
>> In most other communities this would probably be achieved by actual
>> code contributions. In the Advocacy group, I'd guess this would be
>> work like writing PR content, managing web forums, or maybe running
>> User Groups.
>>
>
> You "guess"? That sounds pejorative. I hope you didn't mean it that
> way. What is "writing PR content, managing web forums, or maybe
> running User Groups" mean anyway?
I don't know... I'm not a marketing person. But to me advocacy suggests
the sort of things that that marketing folks might do. And I'm not
trying to suggest that those things aren't important. But I don't think
they are so much vastly more important that the group should have 2-4x
the clout of the other large groups in OpenSolaris.
I'm also not certain that setting up a blog or some other kind of
posting forum really should grant "core contributor". However, some
folks certainly have done a lot of work (Ben Rockwood comes to mind, for
example. As Dennis Clarke, etc.) to help spread adoption and
evangelize OpenSolaris, and they deserve to be recognized. Are there 48
such individuals? I'm not sure.
Put another way, if I set up a small "Temcula OpenSolaris User's Group",
would I deserve a core contributor grant from the Advocacy Group? I
hope not. Now if I helped coordinate several large user groups, did a
bunch of associated mail list moderation, etc, then yeah, I can see it
would make more sense. I'm just hoping that there is sanity in the
Advocacy Group. (I'm not saying that there isn't such sanity...)
>
> Actually, Advocacy sponsors the BeleniX list, which is directly about
> coding (within the context of a distro that is largely run by a
> thriving user group that has other very technical contributors).
The BeleniX distro should have its own CG, IMO.
> It also sponsors the trademarks list, which is about
> marketing/branding and that is a specialized activity. It also
> sponsors the main news page on opensolaris.org, the only CG to
> maintain one of the main site pages. It also sponsors a new mentoring
> project, which is about getting new people involved in coding. It also
> sponsors 56 user group projects, which involve users, sys admins,
> students, professors, and engineers of all types in a dozen or more
> countries.
Users, sysadmins, and students are not "core contributors". Someone
running/coordinating a mentoring project for those people might deserve
a CC grant though. (I guess its kind of a gray area for whether or not
actual mentors would get one.)
> Advocacy CG members have been busy presenting at conferences and other
> events around the world for quite some time now, and those people have
> generated quite a lot of content -- the vast majority of which is
> technical. Advocacy CG members have also been meeting with press and
> analysts around the world to deliver technical and community content.
> The Japanese OpenSolaris Community runs installfests led by engineers.
> The Bangalore Community maintains BeleniX and puts on bug-fixing
> sessions led by engineers via the request-sponsor program. The German
> Community ran the first and only OpenSolaris developer conference
> (Berlin first, Prague next) and the papers presented were all
> technical except for one (mine). The China Community runs coding
> contests and engages students at universities to the tune of well over
> 100,000 people at this point. Other communities are contributing
> technical translations in collaboration with the portals and the
> Internationalization CG. And it goes on and on. I can't even keep
> track anymore. Do you consider any of these items to be second-class
> contributions?
No. But I don't consider the *sum total* of them to be more important
than the other work that takes place elsewhere. Not everyone who
writes code for ON is an ON CC. Likewise, I don't think everyone who
participates in the Advocacy group should have a CC grant.
Out of curiosity, does anyone use Contributor (not Core) grants? It
seems like there is an opportunity to use them here.
Also, some of those activities belong in other groups, IMO. For
example, there are already communities for Internationalization,
Approachability, etc.
>
>> Perhaps we should consider a constitutional amendment to limit the
>> number of CC's that a community can nominate (set at some number high
>> enough to reward those groups with greater participation, but not so
>> high that any one or two groups can dominate an election? 10?)
> Is this designed to keep Advocacy down? If so, please try that. It
> will do wonders to help me motivate the Advocacy electorate. Why are
> you suggesting that we punish people who are simply doing good work
> under the rules we all voted for? Why are you suggesting that we
> disenfranchise the *largest* segment of the meta OpenSolaris community?
I'm not suggesting that we punish them. I'm suggesting that Advocacy is
itself not 3-4 times more important than any other activity involving
OpenSolaris. Advocacy by itself doesn't write documentation, perform
translations, or develop new features.
Your "threat" really does help me make my point.
Put another way. If Advocacy simply decides to boycott the elections,
then it maybe mathematically impossible to get a quorum. I don't think
any group should have that kind of power.
>
>> Or perhaps we should just abandon the distinction between CC's and
>> ordinary Contributors, and open the vote to the great unwashed
>> masses? I'm not sure... but I am wondering if the bar set to become
>> a CC in some groups (e.g. Networking or ON) is set substantially
>> higher than in others?
>>
> I'm all for making voting easier and eliminating the distinction
> between "Core" and "Contributor". It's confusing. And it is keeping
> the voting population of Advocacy artificially low.
>
> The bar is not higher for Networking or ON. It's just different. We
> have to allow for the notion that OpenSolaris is more than ON.
> Actually, it doesn't matter if we allow for it or not. It has already
> happened. Also, we have to realize that over time, ON will be a small
> percentage of the entire OpenSolaris community, but that doesn't mean
> ON loses any influence of ON's activities. Advocacy will never attempt
> to run ON. We only want to run our own CG so we can help OpenSolaris
> grow. We trust that ON can run itself. We expect it, actually.
But in the context of *OpenSolaris* (not ON nor Advocacy), the Advocacy
group inherits though its CC grants such an overwhelming vote that the
leadership in other equally important communities can trivially be made
politically irrelevant. That isn't the kind of meritocracy in which I
want to participate.
>> The other wrinkle in all this is that some communities have
>> considerable overlap in their CC membership. E.g. many of the ON
>> CC's are probably also CC's in other groups. It would be an
>> interesting data point to measure "voting loyalty" for each CG, where
>> each CC gets one vote, which is divided equally amongst all the CGs
>> in which they participate. CCs that belong only to one CG contribute
>> 1 to that CG. CCs that belong to two contribute 0.5 to each of those
>> two CGs, and so forth.
>>
>> The resulting graph may yield some surprising data about how fairly
>> (or otherwise) weighted the election is likely to be.
>>
>> Of course, I'm operating here under the premise that we actually
>> *want* all of the CGs to have a roughly equal say in important
>> group-wide matters... that may itself be an entirely false premise.
>>
> They should not be "roughly" equal. Just equal.
If the community groups are equal to one another, then no one community
group should have an unfair advantage in the voting. A group with
several times the number of voters of its nearest community has the
ability to totally overwhelm/disenfranchise any of the other communities
it owns.
In US history, there are several problems and different views that have
led to things like the electoral college, the bicameral legislation,
etc. Maybe what we need here is some kind of bicameral legislative
body. I dunno. Right now I don't like the idea that Advocacy group
could pretty much take over the entire organization even if all the
other CCs banded together to fight it. (Due to the overlap that exists
in other CGs, I think you may find that the number of contributors who
are Advocacy CCs outnumber the sum total of all other CCs. For
example, I think most of the ON CCs are also CCs in other communities.
I myself am a member have 3 CC grants.)
-- Garrett
