Lennart Regebro wrote: >> I'm talking about a group of people who act as if they're responsible, >> not your mythical committee. We should be able to find a bunch of people >> with a sense of responsibility, right? > > Yes. But I don't think making them a steering group is going to help.
Just to take some experience from Plone again: sometimes it's *very* useful to have someone (be that one or more persons) with some legitimacy and responsibility, for two reasons: - it makes other people sit up and listen - it nudges those people into performing a role that may not otherwise have So, in Plone, we have a few loci of legitimacy: - The founders, Alex and (now to a lesser extent involved) Alan, who get it through respect and historical position - The Plone Foundation Board, who have a proper voting structure and deals with non-code/functionality matters. - The release manager, who is elected, confirmed by the board, and paid (a tiny bit) for his duties - The framework team, who are lieutenants and advisers to the release manager Sometimes, those people can step in and say "enough is enough" in a discussion. Sometimes they can take the lead and summarise a particular debate, or try to nudge people into being more constructive. Sometimes, they will cast the deciding vote if the community is split in its opinion. Sometimes they will be careful to ensure that decisions are recorded and disseminated through documentation, mailing lists and blogs. This role is very important, and I think it's lacking in the Zope community. How many discussions have there been recently that just died under the sheer weight of the number of lengthy and opinionated replies there were? How many times have we gotten bogged down in semantics or naming discussions and killed off the momentum behind something? I'd argue that the reason this happens is not (just) that we're a bunch of opinionated people. It happens because no-one, save perhaps Jim, who is largely silent in these debates, has the legitimacy to make any kind of decision or prod people to move along. And even if someone does have that legicimacy, they don't *feel* that they do (or think that others feel that they do) and so they don't exercise it. We're not talking about dictatorship here, nor are we talking about anyone going off and making a whole bunch of decisions that others have to blindly follow. Open source doesn't work like that. But there are ways to provide some guidance: - Elect rather than appoint, so that the people being led feel that they have a stake in the decisions made. - Elect the right types of people. Thankfully, we have many capable and pragmatic people to choose from. - Create a process for self-perpetuation of the group that means responsibility rotates. This is a good way to get people more involved in a project as well as a way to share the burden when there's a lot of work. - Be transparent and document the discussions that take place, to avoid conspiracy theories. Again, looking at Plone, the framework team has worked out pretty well. If anything, we started out with too little process and found there were gaps we had to plug. It's not overly process-heavy, though, nor does anyone have any illusion that a team that is focused on achieving a particular task (roughly, getting a good release out the door without compromising the future of the stack) for a particular period of time (one major release) is going to be able to boss anybody around. But having *some* process and *some* structure is incredibly useful, if only because it makes things a bit more predictable and easier to fit oneself into. I'm sure that if you asked an outsider how they could contribute meaningfully to the architectural direction of Zope, they wouldn't have a clue, because it's all ephemeral, undocumented and dynamic. We rely on a lot of unwritten rules. If you asked them the same question about Plone, they would at least have some ideas, because there's some structure there to be understood and taken advantage of. This type of thing is pretty well researched in the social science of organisations and groups. It's also pretty common in other open source projects that have reached a certain size or age, including Plone. I think Martijn is trying to address something that Zope has lacked for a while. I don't think it'll solve all of the world's problems, nor do I think that Martijn things so, but it will make some things - things like this very debate - a bit easier and more productive. Martin -- Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book _______________________________________________ Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )