[ogb-discuss] [opensolaris-summit] My comments (very subjective) on proposed Summit topics

[Keith M Wesolowski]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 04:28:09PM -0700, Darren Reed wrote:

> In short, the OpenSolaris community hasn't built itself or sat
> down and thought about what structure is best for it.  And we;ve
> now got a structure where various groups are uninterested in
> change because it might mean that they are "demoted" from
> being a community because there is a perception that being one
> is a good thing or means you are important or....

I know I've tried very hard to avoid using the word "demoted" in this
way, precisely because of that possibility.  A Project and a Community
Group simply are not the same type of structure, and do not serve the
same purposes.  There is neither promotion nor demotion involved.
When we initially took stock of the legacy Communities left over from
the pre-Constitution era, we had it in our minds that a large number
of them were better represented as Projects under the sponsorship of a
small number of broad umbrella Community Groups.  We started asking
the principals for their take on this; I know I personally did not
expect controversy.  But, lo and behold, we got our heads bitten off!
Not - as you suggest - because people were afraid of being "demoted",
but because many people felt that their approach to a particular
problem space was radically different from others' and that achieving
consensus within such a framework would be too difficult.  In other
words, we left Community Groups as relatively fine-grained entities
precisely because we wanted to help people be more productive.  We
could have simply forced everyone to submit to our will as we crushed
their Community Groups beneath our iron heel and forced them to work
with people they do not respect and with whom they cannot agree on any
technically substantive matter.  What possible good could that have
done, and what sort of precedent would it have established?

> Compare, for example, the decision to have communities for
> ZFS and SMF with that for security and networking.  On the
> one hand you have two (ongoing) projects within Sun, on the
> other you have two communities of people with lots of different
> projects involved.  The problem we have is that there's only
> one level or way to represent a group here: as a community.

The notion of an "ongoing project" is part of the problem, I think.
In principle, there's no such thing - there are active Projects, there
are completed (or abandoned) Projects, and there are Community Groups.
Logically, if a community forms around a completed Project's artifacts
and - this is the key - wishes to sponsor additional active Projects
to improve and extend that work - then by all means it makes sense to
represent that as a Community Group.  Not because it's a reward for
success or as a "promotion," but because that's what it *is*.

The idea that there cannot be internal structure within a Community
Group is also incorrect.  As I've written many times here and
elsewhere, Groups are free to create their own structures under the
rules of parliamentary procedure.  (DANGER - Bureaucracy Ahead!  Don't
read this if the notion of spending 2 minutes writing a couple of
sentences seems like a waste of time.) In practice, this means they
can create arbitrary committees/working groups/interest groups to go
off and do whatever it is that they don't all care to work on
together.  That no Group (to my knowledge) has thus far chosen to do
so does not reflect a defect in the Constitution.

> But who made all of the decisions about this?  Sun.
> Not the OpenSolaris community.

Really?  Here's what actually happened:

1. Sun appointed Casper Dik and Simon Phipps to represent it on the
CAB, along with Roy Fielding to provide an outside perspective.

2. The OpenSolaris pilot participants elected Rich Teer and Al Hopper
to the CAB to represent the interests of the broader non-Sun developer
and user communities.

3. The CAB was asked to write themselves a Charter.  Eventually, the
one under which we currently operate was approved unanimously by the
CAB.  At that moment, the CAB became the Initial OGB.

4. The Initial OGB was tasked by the Charter to write a Constitution.
Its term was to expire after approximately 6 months.

5. The Initial OGB did not complete its task in the allotted time;
Stephen Harpster, acting in accordance with the Charter, chose to
re-appoint the members of the Initial OGB as the Second Initial OGB
(he could have, at his option, dismissed the Initial OGB members and
appointed 3 to 7 other individuals in their places).

6. The events in (5) occurred again, with the same result.

7. The Third Initial OGB approved unanimously the Constitution we have
today and presided over an election, at which 268 individuals were
eligible to vote (many of whom did not and do not work for Sun).  145
of 153 voters ratified the Constitution; 4 abstained.

8. At the same election, 153 ballots were cast for the OGB; the
winners of this election remain in office today.

So, did Sun make the decisions you're complaining about?  It seems
that your complaints center around the definitions of Projects and
Community Groups (we no longer have any entities called Communities)
in the Constitution.  Those definitions were written by 2 people
chosen by Sun and in its employ, 1 person chosen by Sun but under no
obligation to it, and 2 people completely outside Sun's control.  We
could argue about how that shakes out, but it's not like the Sun
appointees won the vote 3-2; it was unanimous.  And if the
Constitution were so egregiously favourable to Sun, why did only 4
people vote against it?  Surely more than 4 eligible voters were
"non-Sun"!

If you want to take it back to first principles, then yes, Sun did set
all this in motion - by creating the pilot program, accepting its
participants, and actually releasing the source under open licenses.
I'm unsure how any other course of action would have been possible,
though.  And the actual decisions you're unhappy with were not made by
Sun.

Thankfully, we have a means for the entire OpenSolaris Community -
without regard for employment status - to come together and improve
the Constitution.  What, precisely, would you like to see in place of
what we have today?

-- 
Keith M Wesolowski		"Sir, we're surrounded!" 
FishWorks			"Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"