[advocacy-discuss] OSUG Discussion: OGB Reorg and New Webapp Issues

[Jim Grisanzio]

hey ...

As the OGB discusses a possible reorganization and community 
simplification, I wanted to bring up the OSUG issue so we can go back to 
the OGB with our input. The time for this discussion is now, so I wanted 
to make sure everyone had an opportunity to participate.

There are a few issues: (1) the OGB's community reorg, (2) the progress 
on the new opensolaris.org webapp, and (3) the desire of some here in 
Advocacy to see the OSUGs have a higher profile on the site. History: 
The OSUGs were all migrated to individual projects within the merged 
Advocacy CG last year. But at the time I felt, and many agreed, that 
this was a temporary solution to solve an immediate problem and that in 
the future we could do more to help the OSUGs evolve on the site. That 
future is now.

There are two key features of the new webapp related to this discussion: 
(1) it will be able to recognize new collective groups (user groups, 
SIGs, consolidations, or whatever we want to specify) so we'll have new 
options for organizing the community, and (2) it will include a new 
content management system based on a wiki so it will be easier to edit 
and maintain. The new webapp will be implemented over time, of course, 
so we will all have to go through a migration of content to move to the 
new site in the future. So we may as well decide now how we want OSUGs 
to be characterized in the new webapp.

We have some obvious options:

    * Do nothing. Leave the OSUGs as sponsored projects inside Advocacy.
      The new webapp will allow horizontal relationships between
      collectives as well as hierarchical relationships. So, we can just
      leave things alone and see what the OGB comes up with -- whether
      the new system is horizontal or hierarchical or just a cleaned up
      version of what we have now.

    * Move the OSUGs to opensolaris.com, which is supposed to be evolve
      into the central user site for the community. The big issue here
      would be that moving OSUGs to another site would remove them from
      the OpenSolaris governance system, and we don't know how OSUG
      members would feel about that.

    * Choose to assert that OSUGs should be their own collective along
      with Community Groups and Projects when the new webapp is
      implemented. The new webapp will allow this functionality. Also,
      this option would keep the OSUGs within the OpenSolaris governance
      system, thus preserving all the Contributor and Core Contributor
      grants. How we grant Contributor and Core Contributor status would
      have to be considered, but that issue is also being discussed as
      part of a potential OGB reorg.

The OGB is a dependency here. I'm not sure how the OGB will implement a 
reorg at this time, and there is no time line or schedule at the moment. 
Also, we can't actually change our status without going to the OGB, but 
we don't necessarily have to wait for reorg, either. The two issues are 
not necessarily joined. There's nothing stopping us from going to the 
OGB and asserting what we want /independent/ of a reorg. That would be 
helpful to the OGB, actually, since Advocacy is the largest CG in the 
community, and the OGB needs to hear from the community about these 
issues if a reorg takes place.

My view: I propose we ask the OGB to let the OSUGs become a new 
collective -- User Groups -- on the site when that functionality becomes 
available whether the reorg is specified or not. This would not get in 
the way of a potential reorg. In fact, it could be part of a multi-step 
reorg, but more importantly, it could enable the OSUGs to have the same 
status as Community Groups and Projects if the reorg is delayed, or we 
decide a reorg is not needed, or if the reorg is relatively minor with 
no structural or relationship changes. My goal is to move the OSUGs out 
from under the Advocacy CG while still maintaining governance status for 
the 4,000 or so people in the user groups right now.

Agree? Disagree? Any other options we should consider?

References:

OGB Reorg
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=1937

Website Update:
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/website/wiki_requirements/
http://auth.opensolaris.org/restructuring.html

Jim

-- 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/

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