Hi *, On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 12:36:03PM -0700, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: > > I think your comments address the larger issue of handling RFEs > generally, not the particular one of getting representative NLC leads > early into discussions with Sun on the app's direction.
How can you decouple these things? - What do you mean with the "direction"? > However, the > point you repeatedly made, that "Sun's decision making process is just > not ready for this" is true enough. My point was rather to see whether > the NLC leads/reps would be willing to engage with Sun product > management early, though it is not clear what "early" means here. What would the NLC and Sun's management could debate on if not what new features to implement? IssueZilla already provides a mean to "measure" the desire of the community (votes) - but currently these are useless because the number of votes doesn't have any influence on issue handling (again: only the decisions meant here - not the actual implementation). For this reason the voting mechanism is not promoted and not widely used. The proposed review system could bring special attention to certain issues of importance to NLCs. > >> 2. Second, and this proposal can work within #1 above, we discussed a > >> model where representatives of the NLC leads might meet directly with > >> StarOffice marketing and product management leads. The idea is to > >> represent to SO product management the desires of the NLC users. As > >> mentioned above, representative leads may have to sign NDAs with Sun, > as > >> they would be discussing proprietary information with the company. > > > >Much simpler would be: Ask the NLC-Leads/the whole community for > >feedback on the specs before they are made final. This would help a lot > >in preventing some of the big mistakes done with OOo 2.0 > >But again: This doesn't solve the issue-problem. > > That's fine with me. But I do not really want a version of Q-Concept > document, which was a late document that was given to the community for > review, and pretty much only for review. No, it is the small things that count, not the big picture. * incompatible changes that break the layout of old documents * change of defaults * dropping of features that have been there for years * strange user-scenarios to justify a spec * unwillingness to correct obvious misinterpretations of "guidelines" (combined with a lack of explanation how the misinterpretation was born) It is these things that annoy users and sometimes make them angry. If NL-Leads can veto these specs early, then this would be a huge step forward. But for this to work, you have to know about the spec early, before it is handed to the developers. > Overall, the larger point I was trying to make was to get the interested > community involved in a coherent fashion in shaping 3.0. The main tool for feedback on OOo is IssueZilla. These issues are filed by the community. This is what is needed IMHO: * involvement in creating specs * veto on specs by NLC-leads/representative * early decision on selected issues proposed by NLC-leads/representative * early decision on issues with many votes. * early decision (accept/reject) on issues with patches. Again: Decision only means: "Yes, we'll implement" or "no, we won't implement ourselves/no, we don't want to have this in the product." (And it doesn't necessarily have to be Sun that takes this decision - this could be a steering committee as well) Of course NLC-leads should be involved in creating the big picture, the general "way to go", but without having influence on the small thing whis won't help at all. ciao Christian -- NP: M Pheral - Words --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
