On Sun, 2006-02-05 at 23:57 -0500, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: > As the ultimate agenda for the council discussion stated, there was > no clear request for Council action. Your clamour that it was an > injustice with, at the time, crucial evidence lacking, was not enough > for the Council to do specific things.
Clamour? Unnecessarily emotive language? The fact is that my submission was substantially about process and has been all along. If you want to interpret in a different way its up to you. If you don't understand the relevance of procedures in being seen to treat people fairly there really is no hope. As I said before E-mail is not a good medium for much of this, if you want to find malice where there is none you will. If the project is fine with the procedures for sacking volunteers OK, I'll live with it. You control it though, I don't. All I'm saying is that the standards in this respect appear to be a lot lower than in the areas of business I'm accustomed to. I have no power to change any of that but surely the project is democratic enough for it to be allowed to be said - and it would not have come up again if you hadn't reacted to Daniel's post. > The Council returned the issue > to the MP to get the needed evidence and then to discuss it. As I > mentioned in my last email on this subject, I would expect that will > happen once Jacqueline returns this week. Should it be the case that > the discussion results in specific things that are relevant to the > CC, then it could be returned there and the Council would then be > able to act on it. > It would help greatly if you read the actual content of the posts. > For instance, here is what Laurent wrote to the Marketing Project on > 2006-01-17: > "The CC decided that it had not enough informations to decide anything. > The CC states that this is an internal marketing project issue to be > discussed and can be call as the last solution." > To translate: The CC needed the letter sent by Jacqueline to Ryan to > be made public and further wanted the Marketing Project to resolve > this on its own. If the CC needs to be involved, it can be, as > mentioned above. It might have been helpful to translate it at the time because to me it just sounded like it was being batted back. Back to the limitations of E-mail and language. My point to the CC was substantially one about procedures that do not just affect marketing, the aim should be to prevent this type of thing happening again in future. > >> I could be mistaken, but I really think that Ian and Adam were asking > >> for procedures; not for the CC to ask Jacqueline to tell us why she > >> fired Ryan. > > > > Certainly that was the gist of what I wrote. > [snip] > > Unfortunately, the gist of what you wrote could have been more > precise and productive of action. If it wasn't clear and that is your judgement why did no-one E-mail me or skype me to ask for clarification? It might not be what you wanted but the following is hardly unclear or ambiguous. "There are two key questions 1. What are the published procedures for sacking a Marcon? 2. On what grounds was the action taken?" So I'll ask it again. What exactly are the published procedures for sacking a Marcon? Collecting evidence is irrelevant to answering this simple question. The action is to produce a published procedure. > FWIW, the CC is not in the business > of specifying how each project should be run. It can set guidelines > and it can look at specific instances where there seems to be a > problem. It can then act on specific items. So who is responsible for publishing a procedure for sacking a Marcon? The Marketing Project? If the Marketing Project does not do so and some people feel upset by such an action what then is the redress? These are just fundamental aspects of governance and help prevent or mitigate the very disputes you say are so disruptive. > > It seems to me that the asking for money thing is perhaps a complete > > misunderstanding again underlining the need for caution when acting > > on a > > flame war. It also seems that in practice the CC is not at all > > geared up > > to deal with this type of situation and really it should be. I can > > only > > make an observation here, I have no means of changing anything. > > Looking more closely over the archives, the money situation was > probably a misunderstanding. I referred the request to the CC because > I understood there to be a call for funding travel, lodging, etc., to > the DLS, which we (OOo) had not really decided on. Last year, we had > extensive discussions on the matter, you may recall. As my posts on > this subject have indicated, I am *for* having procedures to target > certain events and for getting funding for those. As of right now, I > understand the CC to manage funding, via Team OpenOffice.org. It did > anyway for last year's DLS and for all prior OOoCons. Some of us also contributed our own money to help others get there as well as spending our own money travelling from the UK to get there not to mention the time. ;-) > I do not make such an assumption and do not personalize things as you > state. Its how it came across. I'm sure you take things Daniel posts personally when he has no intention for it to be so and vice versa. That's how these things blow up.. > I usually do not find personal disagreements worth pursuing, > although you like, for what I do assume is purely rhetorical > purposes, to cast some of my interventions as personal; they are not. > I am interested rather in ensuring that the general health of OOo and > any its projects remains good. Marketing has been having obvious > problems, in part b/c it is such a high-profile project, in part b/c > there is no developer grounding and thus no objective correlative > (who can say what is really working), in part b/c all these things > lead to strongly competing viewpoints and opinions. The fact is that there are different views about just about anything in life. All want to make things succeed, there are just different views of the best way to do it. That is politics, we live in a pluralist society so there are debates about things and the incumbent power gets regular challenge. I suspect that the real difference between the development side and the marketing side is control of the resources. Mostly the development side is controlled by Sun because Sun controls virtually all of the development resource. Fewer discussions and arguments because no-one can compete with Sun on the resource front. The Marketing project has virtually no resource other than the volunteers so the volunteers have much more freedom for dissent because they can choose to target the resource they personally commit where they want to commit. A more difficult managment challenge agreed, but then the key challenge is to motivate that resource to act most effectively. You can do it by threats and coersion, compromise and persuasion. The balance is an issue of leadership style. > Certain people > have been far more interested in critiquing things than in doing. Me perhaps? I say things I think need to be said I suppose. But I like to think I do a few useful things from time to time too. > Those who have been doing actual marketing things have generally not > been the ones complaining that it is impossible to do marketing > things. Some people are more compliant than others. Open Source is a bit of a revolution so its likely to attract revolutionary types. Trick is to channel the energy positively rather than alienating so it acts against. If I negotiate a deal with the UK government to get OOo counted as sponsorship for government matched funding to act as an incentive to get it into schools here it doesn't count because its not on the list? I do what I can here to help with issues I can give the time and resource to, if that's not good enough I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Other people might well react differently after having their well intentioned efforts rejected, particularly the younger ones who have less experience of politics. Snag with that is you get left with the old farts like me and lose all the young energetic revolutionaries. I can see the attraction of a quieter life ;-) > By marketing things I refer to the PRs we send out, the > collateral created, and some events, to name but three. I did personally pay for Alexandro Colorado and Daniel Carrera to attend OOoConf2005 and I also gave 1000 Euro to the conference despite the fact I couldn't attend myself as I was recovering from an operation. I can't contribute to every press release but I generally do publicise them even though I'm not a Marcon. What you see and what actually happens are not necessarily the same thing. > But if we do not want ceaseless strife then what this project needs > is the special effort to listen and act considerately. This is entirely a matter of perception. Who is not listening to whom? > It does not > need relentless criticisms that recycle tired rhetoric to make a point. That happens when nothing appears to change. Hopefuly the start with a marketing Wiki is a step in the right direction in resolving some of this. > My point was that Daniel's (and to a degree, your) tactics have had > a deleterious impact on the project and that not only am I tired of > it but so are others. My tactic is to try and build bridges. I see people who were incredibly active alienated and I want to get them back. If I thought it was an entirely lost cause I would not be wasting my time here now. You are in a uniquely powerful position in the project, I shouldn't have to point that out. It seems from here that anyone who disagrees with you is considered an enemy. Anyone who makes constructive criticism and wants so improve things in a way you do not approve runs the risk of being pressured to leave one way or another. Yes young people can be exasperating at times and don't always go about things the right way. The older ones should be mature enough to realise that and see the value in getting them onside. Just ask any teacher in the public school system. > Here is the point: This project is not just > for you or for Daniel or anyone and it's not for me. Except you have considerably greater power than anyone else. How you excercise that power is the real point. > It is for the > collective body of OpenOffice.org. To this end, I am not really > interested in hearing yet more tirades against how you cannot do any > work but am interested in hearing new voices and new ideas. Hm, like Steven who comes new and says more or less what we have been saying? You say its not personal but on that evidence it certainly seems to be. > Look at who has been posting in the last ten days and at the tone. As > the tone becomes more acrimonious, only you, Daniel, Jean, and a few > others more or less in your circle continue to post (and I every now > and then respond). What about new people? If you are really > interested in broadening the scope of this project, let others speak. When did I stop anyone speaking? Anyone is free to speak on anything they like as far as I am concerned, I don't moderate this list, I can't sack anyone. The only reason I have spent time on this is because you seemed intent on opening the old wounds with Daniel again and I want to close them and get on. My previous stuff was correspondence with Christian and Steven about development of the Wiki and replying to some of Steven's questions as a newcomer. The reasons for the need for a Wiki are going to come up in the discussions. And I do think there should be a procedure that is seen to be fair for removing formal responsibilites from people such as Marcons. If that is a problem for you or anyone else I'm sorry because I don't see me changing my view on that even if I can't do anythng to change the situation. Regards, -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
