[ogb-discuss] Re: [osol-discuss] Changes to "Contributor" status

[Darren.Reed at Sun.COM]

Alan Coopersmith wrote:

> [Added ogb-discuss, since that's where any real change has to
>   happen - opensolaris-discuss will get you nothing useful.]
>
> Darren.Reed at Sun.COM wrote:
>
>> Within the OpenSolaris community, we have some arbitrary
>> designations we give to people - contributor and community
>> leader are amongst these.
>
>
> Contributor is defined by the OpenSolaris constitution.
> Leader is an artifact of the website tools, and really means
> "Person who can edit website" - that's the only extra permissions,
> powers, or duties that they get.
>
>> I'd like to propose that how "contributor" status is designated
>> such that it is granted to anyone and everyone that is in a
>> position to do a putback or commit to the OpenSolaris code base.
>
>
> Then you need to propose an amendment to the OpenSolaris constitution
> we all just ratified.   It currently states:
>
>    Contributor. A participant who has been acknowledged by one or
>    more Community Groups as having substantively contributed toward
>    accomplishing the tasks of that Community Group, or by the OGB for
>    at-large contributions, shall be termed an OpenSolaris Contributor.
>    Such designation is permanent and persists regardless of the person's
>    current level of activity or status within the Community. A 
> Contributor
>    may request that their status not be published or published only in
>    the form of a pseudonym that is unique within the Community.
>
> What would you like to change it to?   And why would that be better
> than just asking the various Communities such as ON, Desktop, Storage,
> etc. to name the appropriate people as Contributors?


Ultimately, I'd like to see it removed.
*Everyone* should be a contributor or able to be one.
I don't think we need (or should need) arbitrary "badges" to
stick on people that are otherwise meaningless.
Or at least that is the model I think we should be aspiring to.

>> Right now, this would mean that all of those inside Sun who work
>> on Solaris would immediately be given "Contributor" status.
>
>
> Could you even come up with a complete list of those people,
> short of just giving us a data dump of the entire Sun employee
> database?  I surely couldn't, even if I thought this was a good idea.


About the best I could come up with would be to do a dump of
people in the software part of the organisation that have the
relevant employee level (I think Z*?) to indicate they're an engineer
and not a mangler.

>> The benefit here is that there are some things that only
>> "contributors" appear to be able to do and what they can't
>> do only serves as a barrier for them to properly engage in
>> various OpenSolaris communities.
>
>
> As far as I know there is nothing we've intentionally set up that
> only Contributors can do.   I know the person setting up the Code
> Review site chose to make it Contributor only - as far as I know,
> he decided to do that on his own, without consulting the OGB.


And this is the basis of my comment.  I wasn't aware that the
cr.opensolaris.org wasn't actually part of the OGB direction.

I'd encourage the OGB to consider taking action to make the
code review site, cr.opensolaris.org, more easily available to
a greater number of community members.

Darren