On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 06:00:11PM -0800, Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> activity at OpenSolaris, and the vast majority of comments we have
> received so far clearly indicate that the existing consolidation
> boundaries are arbitrary AND dysfunctional. Personally, I am hoping
I never suggested that consolidation boundaries should be encoded in
the constitution, only the notion that a non-empty set of Community
Groups exist to control portions of the codebase.
> The OGB has the power to shut this organization down. Sun has the
> power to shut down the OGB and remake this organization. BFD.
Sun does not.
# 11. This Charter may be amended if both the OGB and Sun
# agree.
Unless the OGB agrees, the basis for its powers cannot be revoked by
Sun. Even if it could, nothing would obligate the OGB to honour that
decision; the license to the code is irrevocable and while Sun's
decision to prohibit its employees from participating (that is,
essentially, to make a proprietary fork) would be a heavy blow, it
would not by itself preclude others from continuing to do useful work
under the OGB's leadership.
> We didn't "decide not to act on it". We decided that your comments
> had no merit beyond the clarifications that were added to the
> constitution where certain separations of responsibilities were
> unclear. Further discussion of those concerns is irrelevant until
And I've spent the last several hundred lines explaining that not only
is the division of responsibilities unclear, it's practically
nonexistent insofar as 'responsibilities' are held to include anything
even vaguely related to managing the millions of lines of existing
code.
> a Community Group, as defined by the governance. The constitution
> hasn't even been enforced yet, even though the charter placed it into
> effect as soon as it was approved by the OGB and Sun. Some of
> the OGB members felt that it would be inappropriate to enforce the
> constitution until after it is ratified by the community and a
> fully elected OGB has been established.
They should have felt that doing so would be inappropriate given that
it's prohibited by the Charter. Section 3 of the Charter states:
# The OGB shall define and implement a process for its
# ratification of the Constitution, in a manner consistent
# with democratic principles. This process shall at a minimum
# involve members of the OpenSolaris community in addition to
# the membership of the OGB.
The Constitution is not operable until ratification takes place under
that process.
Regardless, nothing in the constitution requires that the
responsibilities of a Community Group be any different from those of
today's largely useless and dysfunctional Communities. It only
requires that they adopt more rigorous processes for making their
still-undefined decisions. Helpful, perhaps, but hardly core.
> The constitution won't really be tested until there is no other
> behind-the-scenes alternative to making decisions, at which point
> it will either succeed or fail based upon the community's willingness
> to obey its own procedures.
Agreed. As far as I'm concerned, that state of affairs begins the
instant the constitution is ratified. Which is inconsistent, to say
the least, with a document that does nothing to require delegation of
the minimum authority required to allow work to continue. This will
undoubtedly lead to a long and messy transition period, during which
egos will be bruised, confusion will interfere with work, and
responsibilities will be unclear. And the abolition (or restriction
of scope) of Sun-internal bodies not sanctioned by the OGB and in
direct conflict with open development will be put off yet longer,
perhaps indefinitely. Hardly what I'd consider an ideal state.
> has some fundamental flaws. The same structure is in use by several
> successful open source projects, in addition to the 45+ distinct
> communities at Apache, precisely because it provides an agreed upon
> mechanism for resolving conflict in the face of competing demands
> from many individuals who happen to work for many different companies.
Clearly those using these structures successfully are not using them
alone, since they do not describe who is responsible for making any
decision that might reasonably lead to such a conflict. Except,
perhaps, a metaconflict such as this one.
--
Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!"
FishWorks "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
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