A real foundation that will generate some revenue for the openafs contributors and he people who have been a major contributor to the Openafs forms would be great. Are you looking to assemble full time/ part time code contributors? How about a free and paid helpdesk model too! I really don't think Unix System Admins are lazy. When you deploy openafs it's usually to fill a particular need. AFS is an excellent file system to role out on in a campus environment!
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Boyes Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 10:48 AM To: Derrick J Brashear; openafs-info@openafs.org Subject: RE: [OpenAFS] Foundation Plan redux > there's been precious little in the way of comments regarding the plan for > a potential Foundation for OpenAFs, mostly positive, but I'm unwilling to > believe people like it that much so much as are lazy. > > If you have comments please send them! Public discussion is encouraged. > Please reply if you'd like to talk about it! I've been reading the draft documents Derrick posted wrt to the AFS Foundation proposal, and while there's a lot to like here, I'd like to raise a few things that I think aren't addressed yet. First off, I think that the folks that have been working on this deserve a lot of credit for pushing the idea forward and getting the footwork done. It's good to see progress on this front, and it's needed doing for a long time. The current volunteer model is limping a bit (mostly for lack of paid resources to get specific things done), and the additional structure and organization around the idea of a non-profit conservatorship of the AFS environment will help get a number of long-standing problems addressed. I like the basic structure of the foundation, but that leads me to my questions, What I look for in a successful organization is a clear understanding of the basic goals of the organization, and how it plans to sustain itself over time. Financials are all well and good, but the largest open question I have has to do with generating a strong set of leaders and keeping a pipeline of those individuals coming by consciously developing new leaders. I don't see much discussion of either in these documents. I'd like to propose the following set of principles for discussion: * Conservatorship. The Foundation's primary goal should be to act as a non-profit conservator of the AFS code base. It should be generally acknowledged that the foundation is acting as a legal representative of the community, and serves on behalf of the community. * Transparancy The processes and procedures used to make decisions and select goals and leaders should be clearly documented and applied, and it should be easily determined how decisions are arrived at and the decisions each participant made. * Sustainability Any organization that is going to survive beyond the first generation needs a clear development plan and a succession plan to ensure that leadership is available and understands the tasks and steps to run the organization. The current documents do a fair job with the first principle of conservatorship, but I don't see much work on the other two yet. Perhaps the idea is to develop the processes as things progress, but there are good working examples of similar organizations that would probably prove to be valuable examples if used as a starting point. I'm also concerned that there is little discussion of the sustainability principle. How does one become part of the various organizations or committees described in the proposed documents? How long can one obtain as a gatekeeper or board member? Is there a term limit (a desirable thing, IMHO, as it forces an organization to develop new leaders rather than having the same faces in the same places)? All these questions are certainly things where answers can be found, but I'd like to open the discussion and see if others have constructive suggestions to develop a plan we can all live with. I'm happy to discuss these issues with anyone, and look forward to seeing where the final outcome may take us. -- db David Boyes Sine Nomine Associates _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-info mailing list OpenAFS-info@openafs.org https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-info mailing list OpenAFS-info@openafs.org https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info