Re: OODL: CFD: Leadership in the OpenCard Project
Adrian: Probably best if one person has one leadership position, however two nominations is appropriate. If they are voted into both positions perhaps we ask them to select one and the person with the second highest number of votes gets the other. Anthony: I don't see why one person can't do two things. These are not really large positions. Of course, any person elected would have the oppertunity to refuse the position; we can't force anyone to lead. Adrian: Okay, I can handle having one person do two jobs if they want to.
Re: OODL: licensing issues
DeRobertis : Scott, if you don't want to put in a bunch of controls, that's fine with me. We're only trying to protect your software. However, I'm not sure if we could get 25% of the group to vote for, say, even Alain, Uli, Adrian, or me. Scott : I don't really have any idea of how to establish what "membership" is other than just defining it to me "those people who already have a copy of the MC license for OpenCard developers". Alain : I propose that we distinguish between belonging to mailing list versus being a full-fledged member of the collaboration. Anyone can suscribe to the list, but to become a member you have to : (1) make at least one contribution ; (2) be nominated by at least one member ; (3) get the nod from a representative number of members, say 25%; Scott : With this approach the first few people are going to get one easily because they'll only need a few people need to recommend them. It's the later ones who will have a harder time, but it seems to me this is as it should be. Alain : This is indeed "as it should be". I am glad to see that you think so as well. DeRobertis : How many people are registered on this list... Maybe the listserver will tell me? Scott : The "who" command is disabled on the list server to thwart address harvesters. Alain : I was surprised to hear that such a feature existed. Definitely risky ! Scott : There are currently 13 people on the regular opencard list and 7 on the digest version. Alain : Stats on the UFP ? Scott : But you can't count on all of these people because some of them I think are just spies ;-) Alain : Spies that lurk in the penumbra that forever keep a low profile, adopt a wait-and-see attitude, and tell everyone "I told you so" when things stagnate. Or to observe what we are doing so as to report back to the proprietary-software barons that are trying to maintain their monopolies by scuttling the open-source movement. The REAL software is out there ... ;-) Scott : Even if you do count them all, 25% is just 5 people... Alain : Exactly. Not a problem. No surveillance bots, no copyright notices on each page, no splash screens, no highly-unpopular copyright-protection schemes ... Nothing but a self-regulating community-based review process based on trust. We couldn't ask for better. _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: OODL: licensing issues
Uli: Alain, I am Swiss and thus have a rather peculiar view of democracy,
being in one of the few countries where direct democracy has been realized
even down to a very basic decision. But I still believe that we need some
sort of president. There are always situations which require immediate
action and there needs to be a person who can make them instantly or we
might become immovable.
Adrian: This is definitely true. When we discovered the server was
stolen, I effectively declared myself dictator of the group and went
about setting up a new list. In this case everything flowed
smoothly and others let me take over for a while, but if two people
had decided to take over we could have wound up with two different
mailing lists and a divided group. (Note, now that the group is
talking again, I've settled back into my usual role as one of the
crowd. :)
Uli: We'd also have to decide which of the three
presidents (Collab, Prog and UI) is the last instance. I'm for Collab as
he'll have to be aware of everything anyway and UI and Prog are somewhat
specialized ("Fachidioten", as it is said in my native tongue)
Adrian: Fair enough, though the three areas shouldn't overlap too
much. UI and programming would but they should be able to work
together. Collab seems to be fairly separate to the other two
though.
Alain : I beg to differ somewhat. The direct-democracy approach may be
more complicated and slower, at first, but would pay off many times
over later on down the road. Leaders who make "fast and efficient"
decisions without consulting their constituents, almost invariably get
it at least partially wrong. And, in any case, the leader's expediency
does not rally the troops to his goals as optimally as would their
participation in the goal-setting process.
Uli: I also agree on this. We're first and foremost a collaboration.
Adrian: Yes, the leader should only exercise their power when
nessecary, most things should go by the way of direct democracy.
Alain : What does the vice do ?
Uli: I meant a "vice president". Someone who takes care of everything when
the president is out, like it happened when the server was stolen. My
suggestion for a collaboration vice would be Adrian, as he instinctively
got things back in business again.
Adrian: Thanks for this nomination, I gladly accept. I seem to
recall running around like a chicken with its head cut off for a few
days while getting the mailing list back up though. :)
Alain : How about a splash=screen instead ? I don't like the idea of
displaying such a notice on every page of the OpenCard interface. The
interface and the engin are two separate entities. Besides, the latter
will eventually be replaced by our own engin.
Uli: Alain, remember this will be a prototype. With copies of MC that are
sold it'll look just like every other MetaCard stack. Only the MCs that UFP
members get and on which they'll develop it will have, say, a black bar
with a white Geneva 10 note that it's the UFP version. We also could leave
out the standalone maker. We'll be able to create the windows, make them
work, and when we're done we can port it to OpenCard.
Adrian: Remember that Scott has indicated this would be a fair
amount of extra work for them, and he sees it as unnessecary at
the moment.
Alain : Here's a controversial proposition for solving the MC-engin
licencing issue. Install a web robot in the MC-engin that acts like a
homing-pigeon e.g. the robot would notify MetaCard of licence
violations thru the WWW.
Uli: I hate that. Techniques like this (IE5's auto-install "feature" is one
of these, it could at least ask before doing that!!!) are only a millimeter
above viruses and worms on my list.
Adrian: This is far too much work for MetaCard to go through with
just for us anyway.
Re: OODL: CFD: Leadership in the OpenCard Project
Michael Fair : ... (since) we are discussing choosing a leader for the group ... Alain : The leadership thing is mainly about assigning one person to organize and galvanize the action of the part that this person is "responsible" for. It insures that things will steadily progress despite the asunchronous nature of our communication medium. Michael Fair : ... I have qualities I would like whoever the leader is to possess. Alain : I am open to such a discussion. Michael Fair : Life is a lot of fun when you let it be and a team who includes fun as a required component to their work becomes a force to be reckoned with. Have you ever tried to stop a roomful of kids who are out there having fun? It's near impossible. Alain : I'm having fun. In fact, I am working purposefully and full-time on achieving my dreams! Seriously. I recently obtained a small subsidy to pay for a consultant. We reviewed my WHOLE life together to grasp my mission in life, and transform that into a thriving enterprise. The whole thing revolves around the use of computers for communication, collaboration, and as cognitive amplifiers. All with the ultimate goal of augmenting people's potential. Michael Fair : So any leader we chose would have to be interested in making this fun, and recognize that most of us are volunteering our time here and that we have other commitments to keep. Alain : Fun is one of my fundamental values too. It's a relative term though. Achieving my goals ( some of them lofty ) is fun in my book, despite the fact that it entails lots of work, some of which will not necessarily be exciting. Michael Fair : I do have a secret to confess. I would like to make lots of money with this project. Alain : Me too. Michael Fair : I also plan on changing the face of programming as I know it and aiding in creating a whole new business model for software development.So it would really be a bummer for me to find out that the leaders aren't interested in making some waves in the software development world. Alain : Innovate or perish, I always say. In the present state of affairs, nearly everything needs to substantially re-thought and re-done. We are in a "Software Crisis" that holds a lot of promise for people willing to take the time to do it right. Proprietary software is "passé". Michael Fair : I guess the last quality in the leadership I would want to see would be a resistance to creating something from scratch. Alain : I have nothing against (legitimately) using the work of others, and concentrate my efforts on innovative ways to integrate these different "components". BUT ... I am rarely satisfied with what is out there, particularly the proprietary fatware that is offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Michael Fair : The power of OpenSource software is its commitment to opening up the source to be leveraged by other developers and projects. It's almost a shame when we reinvent the wheel because we weren't willing to steal from someone else first. Alain : We are actually 3 groups. OODL is developing the application, xTalk the scripting language, and the UFP is developing the end-user products and authoring tools. I proposed PERL as the programming language for OODL but it was dropped in favour of C/C++. Michael Fair : Python, Perl, Dylan, wxWindows, TOM, GTK, Java .. all have excellent stuff for us to steal. Alain : Borrow-legitimately or whip-up-one-just-like-it, of course. Nothing wrong with that. Michael Fair : I have my blue sky for this project, and it won't necessarily be the same for you ... Alain : My conviction is that we can do MUCH better than most of the software/systems currently on the market today. Power to the people ! Michael Fair : ...but the beauty of my experience with open source so far is that usually the best person for the job is a pretty clear choice, and in general people who know the problem well enough to talk about the solution, are more interested in a good solution then they are their egos. Alain : I am sure that this is the case. We are more interested in solutions than touting our horns. The leaders are there to galvanize the actions of the group for the section that they are leading. It also insures us that each important dimension ( collaboration, GUI and programming, for now ) will not be neglected. Michael Fair : Would it be safe to say that each of us wants a product that we can be proud of, is cross platform, and fits nicely into our current lifestyle? Alain : Absolutely! Michael Fair : I don't think that any one here wouldn't be interested in some form of compensation for their work. Alain : Yes, but this is a delicate subject. We are currently discussing the OODL licencing issue, but we haven't quite resolved it yet. I believe that any member should have the right to use OODL as an authoring system to build end-user solutions that can be sold without any licencing hassles. Similar to the licencing scheme for HyperCard Standalones. Michael Fair : I can
