Shawn Walker wrote: >> premature to say that our existing mechanisms don't work. And the > > It has been well over a year that we have been a self-governing body. > The fact that the mechanisms we have are not used and that so little > progress in certain areas has been made implies to me that they do not > work.
That statement fails to distinguish between the mechanisms we have in place already and our use (or lack of use) of them. Discarding the structures we have because we haven't used them effectively doesn't seem sensible. > No, I mean Sun as a leader in the role defined in change #3 listed in > the proposal. I do not mean a specific individual since those change > at Sun quite frequently from what I've been told :) Then you don't have a workable proposal, sorry. I've already explained that Sun is not a single entity, and the word 'leader' implies that there is a named person who will represent Sun. >> You've ignored one of the main inspirations for the OpenSolaris >> governance model - The Apache Software Foundation. In fact one of the >> founder members of the ASF helped draw up the OpenSolaris constitution. > > No, I haven't ignored them. I merely omitted them from the document > for the sake of my personal sanity and brevity. I also felt that I was > not qualified to properly comment on their model as I have little to > no experience with them and given one of our prominent community > member's personal involvement; felt that it would not be appropriate. Eh? that's a *very* bizarre paragraph. You deliberately omitted to mention the ASF model? That seems suspiciously like tailoring your evidence to suit your agenda. And if *your* experience is valid, as you claim, how can you simultaneously hold that the experience of others isn't? > That's great for Apache. However, I don't feel that their governance > model works for us; they seem to have the strong leadership they > already need. I believe that our community needs clearer direction. A paragraph ago you were claiming ignorance of all things ASF-related, yet now you feel qualified to discard the applicability of their model to OpenSolaris. On what basis? >> That's far, far closer to the OpenSolaris situation than any of the >> examples you've quoted. I wasn't involved in the drafting of the >> constitution, but I can understand why the ASF model was chosen as an >> inspiration, and I think it was a good choice for OpenSolaris. > > I'm quite aware that this was the "inspiration" given it's primary drafter. I'm not sure who you think the primary drafter was, but I suspect from the above that you've got the wrong person. > Yes, but the current constitution doesn't make it clear enough who has > this authority. As a result, we have people arguing over exactly how > much control the community does have over the usage of the trademark > that bears our name, and how that can be used to represent us. Without > that clear definition, we will continue to have disagreements over > whom can do what. That's a clear misrepresentation of the situation. It is quite clear that everyone understands that Sun is the holder of the trademark, what has been asked for discussion and eventual joint agreement of the rules governing the use of the trademark - something that I believe was at on the drawing board for some time anyway. >>> 4) That the role of product development and marketing, as outlined in >>> our constitution, should be shared with Sun in a well-defined manner >>> with qualified members of the community. >> Unless I've missed it the constitution doesn't say anything relevant >> about product development and marketing - or are you referring to some > > The constitution does mention it; which is why I had citations in the > original proposal. Specifically, if you look at [25]: > > http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ogb/governance/#ARTICLE_III.__Structure.2C_Participation.2C_and_Roles > > You will see that the link above is to a section where the first > paragraph specifically states: > "The OGB, in turn, delegates the organization and decision-making for > specific OpenSolaris activities, such as ****product development and > marketing tasks****, through the creation of Community Groups." That's "such as" not "restricted to", it is an example of the sorts of areas the OGB should be involved in, not a prescriptive list. It needs to be read in context, not quoted out of it. It is talking about the mechanisms the OGB uses for devolving work, with those items being just examples. There are many others. >> future version of the constitution? And in any case, neither of those >> things requires constitutional change, all that is required is an >> agreement between the OpenSolaris community and the appropriate people >> and groups within Sun. It is unworkable to propose that we have to make >> constitutional changes for what are purely organisational issues. > > How is it unworkable? If it is, it is no more so than the current > situation where almost two years later, the groups are supposed to be > responsible: > > 1) Have not been designated Wrong. > 2) If they have been designated, have no fulfilled their responsibilities. That's a sweeping generalisation, and is therefore also wrong. Most have, some haven't. > 3) Have utterly failed, apparently, as should be shown by recent debates. Wrong, in fact quite the opposite. If the presence of debate is taken as a sign of failure, then we are in *deep* trouble. I actually view the current situation in a far more positive light - the potential awakening of the community. > It also not realistic to expect a community to achieve sustained > growth and success if we don't have a document defining areas of > responsibility and expected tasks. Because we do not have such a > document at the moment, our community continues to debate who exactly > has authority over what, and has bickered endlessly over topics that > should have been decided long ago. You seem to be confusing lack of appropriate mechanisms with our failure to use the ones already in place. And you seem to want to stuff what should be procedural rules into the constitution, and they just don't belong in there. We don't need to change the constitution to make rules about how we operate. The constitution *may* need amending as I've said earlier, but I haven't seen anything in your proposal that I agree with *and* that needs to be enshrined in the constitution. -- Alan Burlison -- _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
