Roy T. Fielding writes: > The ONLY reason that the OGB meetings specifically say that they are > open to attendance is because the default procedure would be for > non-OGB attendees to invited by the board members prior to the > meeting. This way, the few people who are interested in a particular > topic can invite themselves, up to a reasonable limit that enables > the OGB to get work done. This has nothing whatsoever to do > with "open meeting" laws that apply to public sector governance. > OpenSolaris is not that type of governing body.
That's not what the constitution actually says. It says that the meetings are open to all members, provided that their attendance doesn't interfere. It does not say "open to invited members" or any other such qualifications for those who might attend. If that's what we really want, then let's see a proposal to amend the constitution to limit OpenSolaris member access to the meetings, rather than just implicitly inventing new rules. Really, I think this is another angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate, and it's a shame to see one this early in our existence. I strongly suspect that even if we throw the doors wide open, the number of non-OGB-members who will want to sit through those meetings is vanishingly small, so the cost is extremely low. (Honestly, are there people who _like_ meetings?) I base that observation on two examples that I know well. One is PSARC. Its meetings have always been open to all in engineering, and now (for open cases) are open to anyone who is interested. Just dial in if you care to see what's happening. Of course, the number who actually do so -- even with a large population who _should_ care -- is extremely small, and usually just a handful. We very rarely have disruptive people attend, in part because it's a self-selecting audience, and also because most people are naturally fairly polite. The other example is the government of my home town, North Andover. All of its meetings (except for rare executive sessions) are open to the public. They're almost always quite orderly, as very few in fact attend any of the meetings. The rare cases where there's a crowd, we almost always know in advance that this will happen (the controversy is obvious), and the meetings become more structured, but still productive. So, not that a binding vote was solicited, but my vote would be to publish the dial-in information for the next meeting and allow others to attend. Ask for an early show of email-hands if you really want to get a handle on the expected turnout. If it does turn out to be a mob scene, *then* we will have good evidence that a different interpretation of that section is needed. Until we do that, though, all we have is mere speculation on what "could" happen. For the record, I say it's 7 angels, who incidentally should have no trouble dialing in along with the OGB members given the number of available conference call lines. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
