I'll put in a bit of history and m2cw regarding the EMC board about here.
Back in the 90s we ganged up on Matt Shaver during the NAMES show and by a show of hands elected him our "supreme superior officer." After a couple of years of this we added some other "board" positions for prominent folk to punish them for not being present at the vote. I believe that it was at the second and last EMC Monday at a late night meeting in the public area outside SteveS's and JohnK's rooms at the Executive Inn in Ann Arbor when we formalized some of the nature, membership, and tasks of the EMC board. There was a lot of very frank discussion during that meeting and we have a good board because of it. We have seen some evolution of those board tasks and will see much more as we move our product forward. Stephen is correct when he says "the board is mostly uninvolved with day-to-day development." Certainly the board is responsible for the big directions that we developers take. At the same time the board is at the mercy of the developer part of our community for what is possible, doable within our present constraints, and occasionally what is prudent. The board has IMO rightly shown little interest in micromanaging development. At the same time formal and informal discussion among the board members has served to moderate some proposed development directions and focus effort to add specific abilities within the existing framework. The open-source EMC project may have started a bit different from most open-source projects but now is firmly aligned to these goals. Our developers are here because they want to write something that does something that they want done. They want their product to be freely available and they want projects that build on it to contribute something back. In essence it is a community owned and operated effort. I've always imagined the board to be a group of folk who have a world view. After all we produce a product that is used widely as motion control. Our governing body needs to understand a bit about the commercial motion control industry, our niche or part in it, and ways that we can contribute to and expand the applications of motion control in the PC hardware world. To date we offer a unique product for two reasons. It is free and open-source, and it is a software based system that can be much more widely applied to specific motion tasks than can any other single system. I'm periodically awed and re-awed by the range of folk and range of abilities that show up among our users and developers. As we consider folk for our board, and as we consider our own vote, let's remember this wide range of motion applications, and remember that we are a world wide group. I want to thank Chris for his leadership this year and the other board members for their work. Rayh On Wed, 2007-07-25 at 15:14 -0400, Stephen Wille Padnos wrote: > Gene Heskett wrote: > > >On Wednesday 25 July 2007, Stephen Wille Padnos wrote: <s> > >>I suspect there will be 5 after the election as well :) > >> > >>- Steve > >> > >> > > > >No doubt. But that does seem to be a pretty small table considering the > >number of very talented folks available. It would seem to be a shame to > >bump > >someone to make room for other, also highly qualified folks. > > > >Since emc's popularity seems to be growing all the time, being able to > >include > >other talented people on the board would seem to be a worthwhile way of > >saying thanks to all of them. > > > >Of course theres always that old saw about the error while compiling > >committee.c, too many arguments to function. :) > > > > > Heh. I like that one :) > > The board is distinct from the developers. The board is there to make > decisions that affect the direction of development (do we deviate from > the RS274NGC spec, do we add features for 23-axis machines ...), > decisions about things like distribution and websites, that sort of > thing. Also, when situations arise that concern things like potential > GPL violations or other licensing issues, the board is there as an > authoritative body to communicate with outside parties. > > In essence, the board is mostly uninvolved with day-to-day development, > as I see it. > > - Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
