Hi ...
Roy T. Fielding wrote:
On Feb 10, 2007, at 7:18 AM, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
In parts, this document attempts to thwart conversation on
OpenSolaris, and I don't support that strategy under any circumstance
-- especially since so many of us have worked so hard to have /open/
conversations. Also, the OpenSolaris Community is nascent, and I
believe we should /encourage/ conversation, not / discourage/ it -- no
matter what the issue is as long as the conversation is respectful.
You say "OpenSolaris Community", but you don't define what that means.
How do you have a conversation with the community when you have no idea
who you are talking to on this list?
This is difficult, I admit. But I mean the people trying to participate
openly on these lists -- both Sun and non-Sun people. That's all I have
to work with, to be honest.
Is the OpenSolaris Community the people subscribed to this list?
I don't think so, since the list is open for anyone to post and
that can be easily influenced by an orchestrated media campaign.
So, who is the OpenSolaris community then?
Is it the people who post the most messages to this list? No, there
are quite a few people who only post here because they are not working
on OpenSolaris, for one reason or another. In fact, there is only a
relatively small number of hard-core Solaris developer/advocates on
this list who have a seemingly endless capacity for reading and
responding to mail. And that number decreases every time there is
an irrelevant conversation on this list.
It's true that list subscriptions on opensolaris-discuss go down after
flamefests. Just slightly, though, and only for a few weeks. We've been
pretty steady at around 800 for a while now. But these discussions on
opensolaris-discuss don't really affect the technical discussions going
on within the technical lists. Yes, a great number of people everywhere
roll their eyes when this happens, but I'm at a loss on how to deal with
it. Don't we need a general list as a community commons where anyone can
go? For instance, I can live here and talk about general community
issues, as can many others, but I'd be hard pressed to hang out on the
ZFS or DTrace or ARC or other project lists because those lists are
highly technical and don't involve meta community issues like we are
talking about here. I feel pretty certain that opensolaris-discuss does
not represent where the core of the technical people communicate.
The OGB does not want to "thwart conversation".
If that's your intent, I certainly believe you. However, I would suggest
revising statements like, "Further discussion on GPL* is merely a
diversion and distraction that should be discouraged," because that's
confusing to me and it seems to assert the opposite of your intent.
I would like for
the conversation to be richer, containing actual facts and reasoning
based on a common source of information, and not just a bunch of
gossip around a marketing campaign that is neither informed nor
sensitive to the requirements of *this* community.
I agree on the richer bit. :) I think everyone does at this point, too.
However, some people certainly have articulated well thought out
positions and their posts are absolutely respectful.
If by "marketing campaign" you are referring to all the media around the
issue, I would agree that that's unfortunate. It's also largely out of
our control. I've said so internally, too, not that it matters much at
my level, of course. This may surprise many people on the list, but just
because some of us work at Sun, we don't necessarily have access to
every level of executive engagement.
Also, many of us have been trying hard to increase the communications
channels between more levels of the company and the community. It's not
easy, I can assure you. How I personally handle it by trying to get more
and more people within Sun to participate in the community. I admit, I
haven't been that successful in that in the short term. However, I'm
sensitive to the very different world the executives live in (I used to
be around them quite a lot). So although I recognize that the
communications situation is not the best right now, I'm also not willing
to flame the execs (or the lawyers, or the marketing people, or whoever
else has been flamed in this conversation). I support their right to
have conversations in the media about this. I just think that the
OpenSolaris community ought to be involved as well.
Now, this brings up a core issue: whose decision is this? Is it Sun's
(as in Sun's executive management), or the OpenSolaris Community's, or
some combination of both? I'm not at all clear on this point. I've heard
many views expressed, but I'm looking to the OGB to make this point
clear for the community.
And, when that
conversation takes place, it needs to be somewhere that only the
community members can post to -- not anyone who happens to swing by
the forums in response to the marketing campaign. That is how we
can have a conversation with the community.
Apache has project-specific "use", development, and private lists,
occasionally a project-wide general list, one community list
(where only contributors can post but the archives are readable by
anyone), one private members list (open only to ASF members), and
one board list (open to members and officers). When we want to
have a conversation with a project, we have it on that project's
general or dev list (only personnel, NDA, and not-yet-announced
security issues are allowed on private lists). When we want to
have a conversation with the entire Apache community, we have it on
either the community list (for development/project-wide issues) or
the members list (for strategic policy or business issues).
There is no anonymous communication at Apache and no forum software
for any of those lists, and thus no transients or trolls can have
undue influence on the conversation. Those conversations aren't
always pretty, and they can explode at times as well, but at least
we know that the persons talking and being talked to are part of
our community. We know they are part of it because they have earned
the right to be named as such, and thus have a vested interest in
the ongoing health of the community as a whole.
All very good points. Thank you. I think initially we were sensitive to
not restricting access to anyone for any reason. I remember three years
ago having these conversations because the environment outside Sun and
the OpenSolaris project was so openly hostile toward us. We wanted to be
as open in our conversations as possible -- knowing full well that it
would be messy and that the opening of all this stuff would take place
over time. That's my understanding of the thinking back then.
Many people coming to OpenSolaris from well-established open source
communities need to realize that it was not ok for us Sun employees to
speak outside the company until very recently. I've said that
OpenSolaris has changed the company, and this is one key way. We wanted
to release the source /and/ move the development outside /while/ still
shipping the company's core product.
So, now we are well ahead of where we were, perhaps it's time to look at
how communication occurs on our lists. I'm certainly willing to engage
in that conversation because although I supported our decision about
this early on, I'm not sure it works all that well anymore.
Easily the biggest problem that I have had with the way that
OpenSolaris has been organized is the way that community lists were
created without an emphasis on contribution, and the notion that
anyone who happens to register on the website is instantly
considered part of the community. In fact, they are just observers,
and no more part of the community than the folks driving past
my neighborhood.
I'm happy to hear you say this. I think all would agree, too. I also
think this issue needs better understanding within Sun about how
community-building occurs, how a company contributes to that, and how
it's quantified in various metrics.
I know this is a bootstrapping process, and that
the actual communities will sort themselves out in time, but we
are at a critical juncture right now with regards to setting up
the real project governance via a constitution that will allow
each community to form and maintain itself. Now is not the time
to be pretending that a conversation on this list is actually
engaging the OpenSolaris Community. The conversation can wait
until the facts are on the table and the community is well-defined,
which is what the position paper says.
I understand your intention from this mail, but I don't read any of that
in the position paper. Who is the audience for the paper? Sun
executives? The OpenSolaris Community? If you are talking to the Sun
executives with that paper, I doubt they'll listen. It's simply not a
good articulation of the issue, and I doubt it actually represents the
views of the community.
Look, everyone's pissed off here. And I can see most of the sides
(though certainly not all). There are threads on opensolaris.org, there
are threads inside Sun, and there are now even more press articles
feeding and inflaming both -- while far too many reasonable people are
sitting quiet. None of this will stop because we are now talking /at/
each other, not /with/ each other.
I appreciate the intention of the OGB to get involved, and I think
that's ultimately the way to go because I see it specified that the OGB
will act as the interface between Sun and the community. I suggest that
the OGB update the document so it's at least at a v1 level, take out all
emotional language (FUD, decree, campaign, etc), more fully articulate
some of the issues, directly address and clarify whose decision this is
and who plays a complementary role, and then call for a meeting with Sun
executive management. This will not get resolved on this list, and it
certainly will not get resolved in the media. It will only get resolved
in a face-to-face (or phone conference) meeting so everyone's clear.
I suggest this because I believe that the level of trust has clearly
broken down here, and that simply doesn't have to be. I also believe
that people involved have honorable intentions. I simply think we've had
a pretty major mis-understanding. Let's address it /now/ because it will
happen again. Of that I'm absolutely certain.
Jim
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
