On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 1:34 PM, Terry Ellison <te...@ellisons.org.uk> wrote: > On 04/09/11 18:01, Rob Weir wrote: >> >> On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Terry Ellison<te...@ellisons.org.uk> >> wrote: >>> >>> On 04/09/11 17:22, Simon Phipps wrote: >>>> >>>> On Sep 4, 2011 5:14 PM, "Rob Weir"<robw...@apache.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Another thing to note is that the existing forum volunteers do not >>>>> "own" the support forums. They do not operate autonomously. >>>> >>>> Are you sure? I believe they do. >>> >>> +1 to Simons view -1 to Rob. >>> >>> AFAIK, A Sun admin has logged onto this services maybe half-a-dozen times >>> to >>> install the base O/S and Coolstack years ago, and no "Oracle" >>> Oracle-employed admin has ever done so. Coolstack is years out of date >>> for >>> this reason. I (assisted by Drew in the early days) do all of the root >>> admin as well as run the Forums. >>> >>> They have always been autonomous from the OOo project organisation >>> hierarchy. The initial decision to allow their creation in the first >>> place >>> was more of a Sun one than an OOo project one -- as the project didn't >>> see >>> the need to have a working User Community and Sun did and provided the >>> box >>> for us to run our service on, though in later years the project came to >>> value the role that the forums have played. >>> >>> So from day 1 the forums have always been autonomous. And one key driver >>> here was so that the community could have the freedom to up-sticks and >>> take >>> their knowledge elsewhere should the relationship break down -- our >>> primary >>> allegiance and service duty is to the end-user community, and not to a >>> development project. The last friction was over the whole issue of >>> whether >>> the forums should continue to support non-Oracle variants such as >>> LibreOffice, which it did and still does against some then strong Oracle >>> opinions. >>> >>> I think that both Drew and I have said this on a number of occasions. To >>> demand that the community unilaterally surrender such autonomy without >>> reasonable engagement is a pretty sure way IMHO to force them to consider >>> the "new home" option. Despite all of the hassle over the last few days, >>> my >>> preference would be to vote to stay, but I am only one voice in what I >>> think >>> is currently a minority opinion. > > First do you at least acknowledge that your earlier statements that the > forums do not operate autonomously was factually incorrect?
If you do not own the hardware, the domain name and the trademark, then you are operating at the pleasure of those who do own these things. That might feel like autonomy, but that is illusory. If you want to see what autonomy looks like, look at http://www.oooforum.org/ The thing to gain some appreciation of is that the unit of decision making at Apache is the project. There is a single group of project committers and a single (P)PMC. No one "owns" any service within the project. No one has exclusive freedom of action. No one can act on their own without risk of a veto. We don't fragment and compartmentalize the project into autonomous functions that are immune for discussion, consensus building, vetos and votes from other project members. >> >> I think it would be good if they made up their mind soon. I thought >> we were close to the physical migration being completed. > > Second on technical point actual the workflow goes (my SSH to Oracle) -> (my > VM in my house) -> svn -> the ooo-*.a.o VMs. The infra team have been very > insistent that this last step can be done by any sysadmin. It really > doesn't have to be a susadmin in a.o. This is a pretty trivial step that > could be pretty much anywhere. >> >> If the >> current volunteers are not on board with the Apache project, then >> we'll need to explore alternative approaches, such as: >> >> 1) Point users to http://www.oooforum.org/ >> >> 2) Do support via mailing list only >> >> 3) Use forums, but find new volunteers > > If these are your options, then perhaps we should put this to a formal PPMC > vote and inform the community of this -- if the outcome is as you are > proposin ing this ultimatum, then you really are forcing them into the > revolt option. Very unnecessary and regrettable, IMHO > Those are some of the options available based on the outcome of your pending decision. It is not an ultimatum.
