On Nov 25, 2007, at 8:48 PM, Glynn Foster wrote: > 3) Roy Fielding's Proposal for Dissolving the Desktop Community > > Lau commented that he thought it was unfair to single out the > desktop > Community Group given there are multiple Community Groups > sponsoring the > Indiana project, most notably the install Community Group. Foster > commented that it just highlights the fact that some project > teams are > working outside their respective Community Groups that endorse > them, and > doesn't necessary see it as a terrible thing. Coopersmith > proposed that > Indiana project consider forming their own Community Group so > that they > can start naming Contributors and Core Contributors and holding > community > votes. Teer thought that dissolving the desktop Community Group > would be > an over zealous response, but commented that having their own > community > might be a good idea. > > Wesolowski commented that there were 4 courses of action; > dissolve it, > restructure it, provide advice or do nothing. He suggested that the > debate currently revolved around either restructuring it, or > providing > advice. Wesolowski commented that restructuring a Community > Group wasn't > an indication of punishment of doing something wrong, but more an > acknowledgment that the current structure didn't accurately > reflect the > way people want things to work. Plocher asked if this was being > treated > uniquely compared to the previous Community Group restructuring > work, and > commented that this proposal had come from an individual and not > the > community themselves. Wesolowski commented that the reason for > why the > previous efforts fell through was that the proposals turned out > to be > exactly opposite to what the stakeholders wanted, but ultimately > the OGB > came out with a better view of how people wanted things to be > structured. > > Carlson offered a motion to vote to take no action on Fielding's > proposal. Lau seconded. > > Yes: Coopersmith, Carlson, Dik, Foster, Lau > No: Wesolowski, Teer > > The motion is carried and Fielding's proposal is denied.
Umm, for future reference, it is senseless to vote on doing nothing. The correct thing for a board to do is either refuse to consider the motion (usually when nobody on the board is interested) or to vote on the motion as described/amended (and thereby reject it if the "no" votes carry). Mind you, these minutes (like all the minutes so far) highlight an ongoing concern that the OGB refuses to govern. The only positive decision made was to create a committee to stick your noses where they don't belong, namely in approving the technical content of an ongoing project (website). If you were the Apache board, a round of trout slapping would soon follow. If the work of the OGB required the acceptance of each community it effected, then we wouldn't need an OGB. You have been elected to govern, not just to advise Sun (as the CAB was), and certainly not to stand idle when a project decides that neither community nor open source are relevant to "OpenSolaris" as a distribution. Do something. I only picked Desktop because of the original Indiana proposal. If you want to be fair, then dissolve *all* of the communities and replace them with one Group per cohesive set of related projects. Finally, institute a feedback mechanism: require that each Group report to the OGB every three months and identify what it is they are "governing" and why they should continue to do so. The OGB cannot do the work of the Community Groups and the Groups cannot do the work of the OGB. It's like trying to pedal a bike with your eyeballs while your feet are left to navigate. Make some decisions like an OGB and maybe the communities will start behaving like Community Groups instead of just discussion forums. ....Roy
