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

[Darren Reed]

Keith M Wesolowski wrote:

>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....
>>
>
>...
>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.
>

The other way to look at this is the way in which we achieve
things needs to change, or the vehicle to use needs to be
different, depending on the need.


>>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*.
>

By presenting projects at the same level as a community,
I believe we've done ourselves a disservice and have
possibly made it harder to engage the broaders communities.


>>But who made all of the decisions about this?  Sun.
>>Not the OpenSolaris community.
>>
>
>Really?  Here's what actually happened:
>
...

None of which pertains to the architecting and formation
of OpenSolaris as a community, only the formation of the
OGB and the constitution.

Darren