progress on OE organization issues

progress on OE organization issues

[Cliff Brake]

We are making progress on some of the OE organizational issues.

1) we have been offered a VM at OSUOSL for hosting OE infrastructure.
Same rack as kernel.org machines, and has a good reputation for
support and uptime.  See
http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Infrastructure for more
details.
2) we are trying to push forward with some form of structure for
membership, and effective decision making:
http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Organization.  Florian Boor has
offered to take care of the membership tasks.

Thanks,
Cliff

-- 
=======================
Cliff Brake
http://bec-systems.com

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Phil Blundell]

On Thu, 2009-04-30 at 08:44 -0400, Cliff Brake wrote:
> 2) we are trying to push forward with some form of structure for
> membership, and effective decision making:
> http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Organization.  Florian Boor has
> offered to take care of the membership tasks.

Thanks for the update, and thanks also for your efforts in getting
things moving.

Do you have any kind of estimated timeline for putting these
organisational structures in place?

p.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Cliff Brake]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Phil Blundell <philb@gnu.org> wrote:

> Do you have any kind of estimated timeline for putting these
> organisational structures in place?

The server changes can happen as I/others have time.  I hope to have
most of the services mirrored over the next couple weeks, and kept in
sync with rsync.  After a period of testing, we can then make the
switch.

The eV stuff is a little less known, as about all I can do keep
hassling those who started the process.  I did note your thoughts
about the eV, and have asked the http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ for
any advice they might have.  An organized way to handle funding does
not seen super critical at this time with the nslu2-linux server
offer, but something we should get in place.

I have been pondering doing a series of polls to get feedback from the
OE community and users.  The first one should be coming out shortly.
Perhaps we can use a mechanism like this for voting, etc eventually.

Thanks,
Cliff

-- 
=======================
Cliff Brake
http://bec-systems.com

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Phil Blundell]

On Thu, 2009-04-30 at 21:43 -0400, Cliff Brake wrote:
> The eV stuff is a little less known, as about all I can do keep
> hassling those who started the process.  I did note your thoughts
> about the eV, and have asked the http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ for
> any advice they might have.  An organized way to handle funding does
> not seen super critical at this time with the nslu2-linux server
> offer, but something we should get in place.

Yes, agreed.  Having a legal entity in place to handle funds would not
be at the top of my own list of organisational priorities for OE; as far
as I can tell, the amount of money that's actually flowing through the
project at the moment seems to be fairly negligible.  I think there are
other issues which would have more of an impact on the day-to-day
operations of the project.  My own personal "most wanted" thing would be
the establishment of some kind of technical steering committee to
provide a coherent policy direction, rather than having decisions with
global impact made on the hoof by individual developers.

The other thing that does strike me about the eV, though, is that it
does seem to be a rather cumbersome choice vehicle for solving the
problem at hand.  From what I gather, the administrative requirements
for setting up a legal entity in Germany do seem to be significantly
more complicated and generally onerous than almost anywhere else I can
think of; witness I guess the fact that it's taken something over a year
to get to the point that we have with it.  

Just as a point of comparison, a couple of weeks ago I found myself
needing to set up a new limited company here in the UK.  It took me
about half an hour to fill in the form, cost me the equivalent of about
$40 in filing fees, and the company was all ready to go by the end of
the same day.  (This is very roughly the equivalent of a German GmbH
rather than an eV, but still.)  I've never been personally involved in
incorporating a company in the US but, from what I gather, it's more or
less equally straightforward to do so there.

I should say again though that I don't intend any of these remarks to be
a criticism of those who are setting up the eV, for whose efforts I have
great respect, nor am I in any way opposed to the eV itself.  I do
wonder though whether all this administrative work is a good use of
scarce OE developer manpower.

> I have been pondering doing a series of polls to get feedback from the
> OE community and users.  The first one should be coming out shortly.
> Perhaps we can use a mechanism like this for voting, etc eventually.

Yes, the one about hosting seems to have worked pretty well so far.
Thanks again for your work on that.

p.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Philip Balister]

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Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-04-30 at 21:43 -0400, Cliff Brake wrote:
>> The eV stuff is a little less known, as about all I can do keep
>> hassling those who started the process.  I did note your thoughts
>> about the eV, and have asked the http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ for
>> any advice they might have.  An organized way to handle funding does
>> not seen super critical at this time with the nslu2-linux server
>> offer, but something we should get in place.
> 
> Yes, agreed.  Having a legal entity in place to handle funds would not
> be at the top of my own list of organisational priorities for OE; as far
> as I can tell, the amount of money that's actually flowing through the
> project at the moment seems to be fairly negligible.  I think there are
> other issues which would have more of an impact on the day-to-day
> operations of the project.  My own personal "most wanted" thing would be
> the establishment of some kind of technical steering committee to
> provide a coherent policy direction, rather than having decisions with
> global impact made on the hoof by individual developers.

My number one concern is that we not create multiple membership groups 
and committees. There is no sense creating groups independent of the eV. 
Sorry it has taken so long to get this off the ground.

Philip


> 
> The other thing that does strike me about the eV, though, is that it
> does seem to be a rather cumbersome choice vehicle for solving the
> problem at hand.  From what I gather, the administrative requirements
> for setting up a legal entity in Germany do seem to be significantly
> more complicated and generally onerous than almost anywhere else I can
> think of; witness I guess the fact that it's taken something over a year
> to get to the point that we have with it.  
> 
> Just as a point of comparison, a couple of weeks ago I found myself
> needing to set up a new limited company here in the UK.  It took me
> about half an hour to fill in the form, cost me the equivalent of about
> $40 in filing fees, and the company was all ready to go by the end of
> the same day.  (This is very roughly the equivalent of a German GmbH
> rather than an eV, but still.)  I've never been personally involved in
> incorporating a company in the US but, from what I gather, it's more or
> less equally straightforward to do so there.
> 
> I should say again though that I don't intend any of these remarks to be
> a criticism of those who are setting up the eV, for whose efforts I have
> great respect, nor am I in any way opposed to the eV itself.  I do
> wonder though whether all this administrative work is a good use of
> scarce OE developer manpower.
> 
>> I have been pondering doing a series of polls to get feedback from the
>> OE community and users.  The first one should be coming out shortly.
>> Perhaps we can use a mechanism like this for voting, etc eventually.
> 
> Yes, the one about hosting seems to have worked pretty well so far.
> Thanks again for your work on that.
> 
> p.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Openembedded-devel mailing list
> Openembedded-devel@lists.openembedded.org
> http://lists.linuxtogo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openembedded-devel
> 

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Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Phil Blundell]

On Thu, 2009-05-07 at 08:08 -0400, Philip Balister wrote:
> My number one concern is that we not create multiple membership groups 
> and committees. There is no sense creating groups independent of the eV. 

I guess my problem with this point of view is that I haven't ever really
seen a clear roadmap or timeline for getting the e.V. "deployed" in
practice, nor a definitive statement of what exactly the e.V.'s mission
will be once it is up and running.  (In particular there seems to be
some unclarity about whether the e.V. is intended as purely an
administrative vehicle for managing funds, organising servers and the
like, or whether it is to be more of a general project governance
organisation.)  So it seems like we might be waiting a long time, only
to discover in the end that, when the e.V. is up and running, it doesn't
actually help us with solving the problems at hand and we are no better
off than if we'd just acted straight away.  

Presumably the existing core team must have some kind of vision for the
exact role that the e.V. would play in this new world, and how we get
there from here, but I've never seen it articulated anywhere.  Can you
shed any light on that?

p.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Philip Balister]

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Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-05-07 at 08:08 -0400, Philip Balister wrote:
>> My number one concern is that we not create multiple membership groups 
>> and committees. There is no sense creating groups independent of the eV. 
> 
> I guess my problem with this point of view is that I haven't ever really
> seen a clear roadmap or timeline for getting the e.V. "deployed" in
> practice, nor a definitive statement of what exactly the e.V.'s mission
> will be once it is up and running.  (In particular there seems to be
> some unclarity about whether the e.V. is intended as purely an
> administrative vehicle for managing funds, organising servers and the
> like, or whether it is to be more of a general project governance
> organisation.)  So it seems like we might be waiting a long time, only
> to discover in the end that, when the e.V. is up and running, it doesn't
> actually help us with solving the problems at hand and we are no better
> off than if we'd just acted straight away.  

What exactly are you proposing to do?

Philip

> 
> Presumably the existing core team must have some kind of vision for the
> exact role that the e.V. would play in this new world, and how we get
> there from here, but I've never seen it articulated anywhere.  Can you
> shed any light on that?
> 
> p.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Openembedded-devel mailing list
> Openembedded-devel@lists.openembedded.org
> http://lists.linuxtogo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openembedded-devel
> 

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Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Phil Blundell]

On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 15:04 -0400, Philip Balister wrote:
> What exactly are you proposing to do?

I think I've outlined in previous mails what I see as the most pressing
problem with the status quo: basically, lack of direction and
leadership.  

The easiest and quickest way to fix that seems to simply be to have some
kind of steering group be directly elected by the developers and given a
suitable mandate to make decisions (both big and small) and carry out
general project oversight.

Unlike with the e.V. board there would be no regulatory, legal, or
(directly) fiscal responsibilities attached to these positions, which
should make them somewhat easier to fill since the pool of candidates
would be bigger.  About five members is probably the right size for this
committee: you want it to be an odd number ideally, and certainly no
less than 3 or more than 7.  I would also suggest that the appointment
be for a relatively short period, maybe 3 or 6 months, to try to limit
any problems caused by people "drifting off" because their interest in
OE has taken a back seat to other commitments.  The steering group would
be operated in as open a fashion as possible, with at least its
decisions and a brief rationale (if not details of its full
deliberations) being published.

Absent any more formal membership criteria, the easiest way to define
the pool of "members" seems to be to do what Cliff did with his recent
poll about moving the servers: to take the list of keys with write
access to the git repository, and grant one vote to each developer.  (In
this case we would probably want to use some kind of STV scheme since we
are looking for multiple winners rather than a simple yes/no answer.)

p.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

I agree with pb's suggestion here. In fact some days ago I talked to RP about 
the state of OE and me, the failure of the original coreteam, the e.V. etc.

My view on that is: The ideal situation would be that everyone interested in 
OE -- no matter on which level, technically, supportive, or administrative, 
becomes a member of the e.V.  This is relatively straightforward and does not 
require any financial commitments per se as our status include that a member 
can chose its own membership fee.

The e.V. (remember, this should now include all stakeholders, so everyone who 
is interested in OE is allowed to vote -- not only the committers, but also 
the bug wizards, doc folks, etc.) then votes two boards, an administrative and 
a technical.

A) The administrative one takes care about the legal status, donations, taxes, 
granting access to servers, etc. This one we have already voted on our initial 
meeting in Brussels. It consists of 4 positions. For this year it consists of 
Florian, Robert, Holger, and me -- at least until the next elections...

B) The technical one is probably more interesting to most people on the list 
here. The technical board is responsible for keeping the project on track as a 
whole, helping us staying focused, improving BitBake and OpenEmbedded, trying 
to recruit more committers, and -- most important to me due to the recent 
series of events -- resolving conflicts.
This one should contain 7 positions, preferably filled with people having 
different areas of expertise, e.g. toolchain, system level stuff, higher level 
stuff, multimedia, mobile, etc.

All votes and discussions would be open and carried out on public mailing 
lists, wiki, etc. oe-private would be closed for good, since what we need most 
is transparency.

If we can pull such an organization off, I'd be willing to run for a position. 

Cheers,

:M:

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Richard Purdie]

On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 00:37 +0200, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> I agree with pb's suggestion here. In fact some days ago I talked to RP about 
> the state of OE and me, the failure of the original coreteam, the e.V. etc.

Its worth trying to work out what "failed" with the coreteam.
Personally, I was unaware there was actually a problem until too late,
despite being a member of said team so that puts communication issues on
the list. I think other factors were:

* Lack of transparency. This was *not* intentional and people should
understand that. People wanted vendors to be able to talk to people
representing "OE" with some degree of privacy hence the existence of a
private mailing list. Associating it with the core team was was a
spectacular failure in hindsight. I can still see a role for some form
of non-public contact being useful but I'd like to see a small panel of
people elected to a team which specifically handles this.

* Unelected board. The core team was created from the people active on
the project at the time, trying to reflect a diverse spectrum of the
users but it was self elected. I'd like to see the wider OE userbase
decide who was on any team in future.

* Communication. With all the patches flowing through the OE list its no
longer possible to be able to easily recognise important technical
direction threads compared to more trivial issues. At the very least we
need some kind of documenting about when the technical board gets
involved in something. In the existing coreteam, we managed to agree a
decision process but we never wrote down at what point a decision had to
be made.

> My view on that is: The ideal situation would be that everyone interested in 
> OE -- no matter on which level, technically, supportive, or administrative, 
> becomes a member of the e.V.  This is relatively straightforward and does not 
> require any financial commitments per se as our status include that a member 
> can chose its own membership fee.

This seems to be the way the e.V. is designed to work and looks like a
good plan to me.

> The e.V. (remember, this should now include all stakeholders, so everyone who 
> is interested in OE is allowed to vote -- not only the committers, but also 
> the bug wizards, doc folks, etc.) then votes two boards, an administrative and 
> a technical.
> 
> A) The administrative one takes care about the legal status, donations, taxes, 
> granting access to servers, etc. This one we have already voted on our initial 
> meeting in Brussels. It consists of 4 positions. For this year it consists of 
> Florian, Robert, Holger, and me -- at least until the next elections...

I agree with this although I'd consider an odd number of people in
future. 

Are people on this board just making decisions or actually implementing
them as well? I worry about the number of people who can actually do
legal/financial things in Germany not least due to language skills.

> B) The technical one is probably more interesting to most people on the list 
> here. The technical board is responsible for keeping the project on track as a 
> whole, helping us staying focused, improving BitBake and OpenEmbedded, trying 
> to recruit more committers, and -- most important to me due to the recent 
> series of events -- resolving conflicts.
> This one should contain 7 positions, preferably filled with people having 
> different areas of expertise, e.g. toolchain, system level stuff, higher level 
> stuff, multimedia, mobile, etc.

I'd also like to see new and older developers both represented on the
board.

Using myself as an example, I've not been very active in the OE world in
the past few months. This doesn't mean I'm not interested in OE anymore,
far from it. If anyone had come to the coreteam asking for help with an
issue, I would have made time to look into that and act on it and that
is what I was expecting to happen.

I have what I'd hope are some valuable contributions I can make to OE
technical decisions since I know details of the deep inner workings,
have some idea why things are as they are and have experience of
improving OE, sometimes in invasive ways meaning I know what works and
what causes problems. I'd really like to provide these contributions to
the project but I don't know where in the structure I can do that? In a
board of 5 or 7 people, is there room for the various people with
experiences who still wish to help the project but also allowing new
blood in and leaving room for the people who are more active on the
project currently?

> All votes and discussions would be open and carried out on public mailing 
> lists, wiki, etc. oe-private would be closed for good, since what we need most 
> is transparency.
> 
> If we can pull such an organization off, I'd be willing to run for a position. 

Me too, but we need to make sure the organisation that results is
actually going to work. Is one technical board going to work and how
many people are on it are key questions...

Cheers,

Richard

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Phil Blundell]

On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 10:48 +0100, Richard Purdie wrote:
> I have what I'd hope are some valuable contributions I can make to OE
> technical decisions since I know details of the deep inner workings,
> have some idea why things are as they are and have experience of
> improving OE, sometimes in invasive ways meaning I know what works and
> what causes problems. I'd really like to provide these contributions to
> the project but I don't know where in the structure I can do that? In a
> board of 5 or 7 people, is there room for the various people with
> experiences who still wish to help the project but also allowing new
> blood in and leaving room for the people who are more active on the
> project currently?

Yes, I was thinking about this too.  I don't think it's going to be
realistic to have the committee include a representative from every
single speciality field: it would just get too big and unwieldy to take
any decisions.  I feel fairly strongly that 7 people is the maximum size
we would want to have, at least to start with, and with that constraint
it's inevitable that some points of view will miss out on direct
committee representation.

However, it's worth remembering that the committee wouldn't be taking
decisions in a vacuum and that they would be perfectly at liberty to
seek advice or opinions from other people to inform their deliberations.
Indeed, I would very much hope that they would seek input from the
external stakeholders who'd be affected by any given decision.  Plus,
given that the committee would (I hope) be operating in a much more
transparent way than the existing core team has, you'd be able to see
what was going on and, if you thought something had been overlooked,
bring it to the attention of the relevant committee members.  Obviously
you need to have a little bit of faith in the committee to do the right
thing but, if they consistently fail to deliver on that, one would
expect that they'd get voted out of office next time the opportunity
arose.

p.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Mark Brown]

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 11:55:37AM +0100, Phil Blundell wrote:

> However, it's worth remembering that the committee wouldn't be taking
> decisions in a vacuum and that they would be perfectly at liberty to
> seek advice or opinions from other people to inform their deliberations.
> Indeed, I would very much hope that they would seek input from the
> external stakeholders who'd be affected by any given decision.  Plus,

I'd expect that with the move to an open list for the core team that
everyone already appears to have agreed on this problem would be largely
self-solving - the need for explicit pulls of information would be
reduced by the discussion being visible.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Phil Blundell]

On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 00:37 +0200, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> My view on that is: The ideal situation would be that everyone interested in 
> OE -- no matter on which level, technically, supportive, or administrative, 
> becomes a member of the e.V.  This is relatively straightforward and does not 
> require any financial commitments per se as our status include that a member 
> can chose its own membership fee.

Sounds good to me.  What exactly needs to be done in order to make this
happen?

p.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Philip Balister]

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Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 00:37 +0200, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
>> My view on that is: The ideal situation would be that everyone interested in 
>> OE -- no matter on which level, technically, supportive, or administrative, 
>> becomes a member of the e.V.  This is relatively straightforward and does not 
>> require any financial commitments per se as our status include that a member 
>> can chose its own membership fee.
> 
> Sounds good to me.  What exactly needs to be done in order to make this
> happen?

Translate the eV papers into English. Someone did feed it through an 
internet translator, but I can't find the output on the web. We should 
go ahead and put them on the wiki.

Basically, to join the eV, you need to be recommended by two members and 
the current members approve (fortunately, we said internet voting is 
fine). There are currently 11 members (this selection was performed by 
the number of people interested in OE willing to eat dinner in Chi-Chi's 
in Brussels, and sign a piece of paper written in German and hoping 
Holger was honestly translating it)

The current stumbling block seems to be setting up an oe-members list 
and verifying the members are still interested in participating.

Then we create a list of proposed members and vote them in. I suspect 
the initial selection criteria will be anyone with commit access who 
wants to join the eV.

Philip

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Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Phil Blundell]

On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 08:54 -0400, Philip Balister wrote:
> Phil Blundell wrote:
> > On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 00:37 +0200, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> >> My view on that is: The ideal situation would be that everyone interested in 
> >> OE -- no matter on which level, technically, supportive, or administrative, 
> >> becomes a member of the e.V.  This is relatively straightforward and does not 
> >> require any financial commitments per se as our status include that a member 
> >> can chose its own membership fee.
> > 
> > Sounds good to me.  What exactly needs to be done in order to make this
> > happen?
> 
> Translate the eV papers into English. Someone did feed it through an 
> internet translator, but I can't find the output on the web. We should 
> go ahead and put them on the wiki.

What's the current status with this?  I guess as a first step we should
at least get the German articles online, if that hasn't already been
done.  That would make it easier to solicit volunteers for producing an
English translation.

p.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[GNUtoo]

On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 22:18 +0100, Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 08:54 -0400, Philip Balister wrote:
> > Phil Blundell wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 00:37 +0200, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> > >> My view on that is: The ideal situation would be that everyone interested in 
> > >> OE -- no matter on which level, technically, supportive, or administrative, 
> > >> becomes a member of the e.V.  This is relatively straightforward and does not 
> > >> require any financial commitments per se as our status include that a member 
> > >> can chose its own membership fee.
> > > 
> > > Sounds good to me.  What exactly needs to be done in order to make this
> > > happen?
> > 
> > Translate the eV papers into English. Someone did feed it through an 
> > internet translator, but I can't find the output on the web. We should 
> > go ahead and put them on the wiki.
> 
> What's the current status with this?  I guess as a first step we should
> at least get the German articles online, if that hasn't already been
> done.  That would make it easier to solicit volunteers for producing an
> English translation.
> 
> p.
There is an interresting part on Legal status here:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/foss-primer.html#x1-190003

by the way why don't we join an umbrella organization?

Denis.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Cliff Brake]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:57 PM, GNUtoo<GNUtoo@no-log.org> wrote:

> by the way why don't we join an umbrella organization?

The is the response I received from SFC folks:

========================
As for your question with regard to how long an application takes,
typically we are 6-8 month backlogged.  I can tell you though, that
we've had another application pending for more than a year in the same
eV situation you are considering here.  We simply don't have the
resources yet to devote to that question, despite a project still
awaiting that answer.
========================

So, I guess you get what you pay for.  Not that we are moving any
faster with the eV, but I guess the bottom line is that it is not easy
unless you are paying someone to dedicate time to keeping it moving.

Cliff

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

On Friday 05 June 2009 23:43:58 Cliff Brake wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:57 PM, GNUtoo<GNUtoo@no-log.org> wrote:
> > by the way why don't we join an umbrella organization?
>
> The is the response I received from SFC folks:
>
> ========================
> As for your question with regard to how long an application takes,
> typically we are 6-8 month backlogged.  I can tell you though, that
> we've had another application pending for more than a year in the same
> eV situation you are considering here.  We simply don't have the
> resources yet to devote to that question, despite a project still
> awaiting that answer.
> ========================
>
> So, I guess you get what you pay for.  Not that we are moving any
> faster with the eV, but I guess the bottom line is that it is not easy
> unless you are paying someone to dedicate time to keeping it moving.

Indeed. Not to mention that we evaluated all the options (including joining 
one of the umbrella orgs) alreadyy before attempting to create the e.V.

:M:

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

Hi folks,

Just a reminder about our plans with regards to the TSC (technical steering 
committee): The idea was that this committee is being voted by the e.V. 
members, however since it should reflect the broad range of interested parties, 
it should be voted by a majority, not a minority. Alas, right now we have

 * 20 subscribers to the member-list, of
 * 70 folks with commit access, of
 * several hundred subscribers to the devel-list,
 let alone all the stakeholders "in the dark" ;)

So, please join the e.V. and request membership to the e.V. via the members 
list, in case you did not have already.

Cheers,

:M:

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Rolf Leggewie]

Mickey, thank you for the update.

Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> members, however since it should reflect the broad range of interested parties, 
> it should be voted by a majority, not a minority.

so, here are the next steps

0) post eV statutes online and translate to English
    cbrake? florian?
1) make eV membership more representative of OE stakeholders.
    goal: 50% of those with RW access should be a member of the eV
2) discuss policies, number of committee members, etc.
3) nominate candidates
4) vote

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Cliff Brake]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 5:53 AM, Rolf
Leggewie<no2spam@nospam.arcornews.de> wrote:

> 0) post eV statutes online and translate to English
   cbrake? florian?

A link to the eV statues have been posted to:
http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Organization

A babelfish translation is posted to:
http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/OpenEmbedded_eV_Statutes

Perhaps German speaking folks could clean this up.

Cliff

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

> As for the last bullet point, what is the status of membership for
> those of us without commit access? I seem to have seen mixed signals
> wether we are invited to be member of the e.V.  Some messages
> indicates that only people with commit access are going to be
> accepted, while others (like mickey) request all interested in OE to
> join the e.V.

One of the major purposes of the e.V. is being able to raise funds to give 
people a chance to improve the spots in OE where we are weak. The idea of a 
self-chosen membership fee was to invite companies who have a certain benefit 
from OE giving back in the form of tax-excemptible membership fees and 
donations.

Most e.V. associations have the notion of 'active' and 'passive' members -- 
both which are equal stakeholders interested in supporting the association 
through their contributions. I consider active members being the committers 
contributing through code, docs, etc. and passive members being the ones who 
rather want to contribute in monetary form.

By being a member, you have the rights to vote when it comes to decisions that 
influence the future of the OE.

> Could someone put a small statement on Wiki on this?

We should, if the board agrees with that.

:M:

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Esben Haabendal]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Michael 'Mickey'
Lauer<mickey@vanille-media.de> wrote:
> One of the major purposes of the e.V. is being able to raise funds to give
> people a chance to improve the spots in OE where we are weak. The idea of a
> self-chosen membership fee was to invite companies who have a certain benefit
> from OE giving back in the form of tax-excemptible membership fees and
> donations.
>
> Most e.V. associations have the notion of 'active' and 'passive' members --
> both which are equal stakeholders interested in supporting the association
> through their contributions. I consider active members being the committers
> contributing through code, docs, etc. and passive members being the ones who
> rather want to contribute in monetary form.
>
> By being a member, you have the rights to vote when it comes to decisions that
> influence the future of the OE.

According to the babelfish translation of the statues, only active
members are given votes.

I believe it is worth noting that thit ties in the current SCM architecture into
the statues.  If someone decided to use a more distributed approach (fx. using
pull-requests instead of commit access), these rules would not give them
voting rights.  Any reason to involve SCM architecture into the statues?

I know this is not intentional, but it is worth correcting IMHO.

/Esben

-- 
Esben Haabendal, Senior Software Consultant
DoréDevelopment ApS, Ved Stranden 1, 9560 Hadsund, DK-Denmark
Phone: +45 51 92 53 93, E-mail: eha@doredevelopment.dk
WWW: http://www.doredevelopment.dk

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Phil Blundell]

On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 08:48 +0200, Esben Haabendal wrote:
> According to the babelfish translation of the statues, only active
> members are given votes.
> 
> I believe it is worth noting that thit ties in the current SCM architecture into
> the statues.  If someone decided to use a more distributed approach (fx. using
> pull-requests instead of commit access), these rules would not give them
> voting rights.  Any reason to involve SCM architecture into the statues?

There doesn't seem to be anything in the statutes which talks about
commit access specifically.  According to the KDE translation of the
statutes, an active membership:

"will be granted if suggested by a member and supported by two other
active members, if the general meeting decides to grant it or if a
simple majority of the active members is obtained by means of an
internet vote. The main criterion for granting membership should be the
candidate’s commitment over a longer period of time and the
contributions he/she made in order to fulfil the Association’s aims".

and, allowing for the slightly garbled translation that you get out of
babelfish, the version on the oe wiki seems to be saying basically the
same thing.  So I don't think there is anything to prevent a
non-committing supporter from becoming an active supporter and gaining
voting rights, so long as they undertake to further the e.V.'s aims in
some other way.

But, if the statutes really do talk about SCMs specifically in some
clause that I've overlooked, then I agree this is probably a mistake.

p.

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Philip Balister]

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Phil Blundell wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 08:48 +0200, Esben Haabendal wrote:
>> According to the babelfish translation of the statues, only active
>> members are given votes.
>>
>> I believe it is worth noting that thit ties in the current SCM architecture into
>> the statues.  If someone decided to use a more distributed approach (fx. using
>> pull-requests instead of commit access), these rules would not give them
>> voting rights.  Any reason to involve SCM architecture into the statues?
> 
> There doesn't seem to be anything in the statutes which talks about
> commit access specifically.  According to the KDE translation of the
> statutes, an active membership:
> 
> "will be granted if suggested by a member and supported by two other
> active members, if the general meeting decides to grant it or if a
> simple majority of the active members is obtained by means of an
> internet vote. The main criterion for granting membership should be the
> candidate’s commitment over a longer period of time and the
> contributions he/she made in order to fulfil the Association’s aims".
> 
> and, allowing for the slightly garbled translation that you get out of
> babelfish, the version on the oe wiki seems to be saying basically the
> same thing.  So I don't think there is anything to prevent a
> non-committing supporter from becoming an active supporter and gaining
> voting rights, so long as they undertake to further the e.V.'s aims in
> some other way.
> 
> But, if the statutes really do talk about SCMs specifically in some
> clause that I've overlooked, then I agree this is probably a mistake.

I'm with Phil, my reading of the statutes says that membership is open 
to people with an interest in the project. There are many ways to 
express that interest besides commiting to the repository.

Philip


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Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Cliff Brake]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Phil Blundell <philb@gnu.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-05-07 at 08:08 -0400, Philip Balister wrote:
>> My number one concern is that we not create multiple membership groups
>> and committees. There is no sense creating groups independent of the eV.
>
> I guess my problem with this point of view is that I haven't ever really
> seen a clear roadmap or timeline for getting the e.V. "deployed" in
> practice, nor a definitive statement of what exactly the e.V.'s mission
> will be once it is up and running.  (In particular there seems to be
> some unclarity about whether the e.V. is intended as purely an
> administrative vehicle for managing funds, organising servers and the
> like, or whether it is to be more of a general project governance
> organisation.)  So it seems like we might be waiting a long time, only
> to discover in the end that, when the e.V. is up and running, it doesn't
> actually help us with solving the problems at hand and we are no better
> off than if we'd just acted straight away.
>
> Presumably the existing core team must have some kind of vision for the
> exact role that the e.V. would play in this new world, and how we get
> there from here, but I've never seen it articulated anywhere.  Can you
> shed any light on that?

One thing about OE that may not be typical is the rate at which key
people come and go.  That said, it seems like the structure needs to
accommodate this -- perhaps by electing a new core team every 3
months.  I propose we make this real simple -- everyone with commit
access gets one vote, and we elect a core team (5 people).  Eventually
this could be expanded to "members".  Thoughts?

Core team responsibilities:
- commit policies
- approving/revoking commit access
- setting technical direction
- resolving disputes
- assigning admin/doc/stable teams.
- making or delegating any other decision that comes up

Once we have votes, then we simply go down the list till we find
enough people willing to take on these responsibilities for 3 months.
With the short term, hopefully it will not be too much of a burden.

It seems like technical leadership and direction is the key need right
now, and I hate to get bogged down in eV details -- it seems that is
secondary as there is no pressing financial needs.

So in the interest of keeping things simple, my proposal -- get an
active technical core team in place, and then worry about legal
structure details.

Cliff

-- 
=======================
Cliff Brake
http://bec-systems.com

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Alessandro GARDICH]

Cliff Brake wrote:
> One thing about OE that may not be typical is the rate at which key
> people come and go.  That said, it seems like the structure needs to
> accommodate this -- perhaps by electing a new core team every 3
> months.  I propose we make this real simple -- everyone with commit
> access gets one vote, and we elect a core team (5 people).  Eventually
> this could be expanded to "members".  Thoughts?
> 

Maybe a such high rate of elections could be annoying, maybe better have 
a valid board with also 3 or 4 members if someone move away ...
I think is realistic that board members will be elected from more 
present developers so probably the high rate of turn over shouldn't 
affect the boards.

just my 2 cent



-- 
  /------------------------------------------------\
|     Alessandro Gardich : gremlin#gremlin!it      |
  >------------------------------------------------<
|  I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.      |
|  A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough |
|  without ever having felt sorry for itself.      |
  \------------------------------------------------/

Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Philip Balister]

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Alessandro GARDICH wrote:
> Cliff Brake wrote:
>> One thing about OE that may not be typical is the rate at which key
>> people come and go.  That said, it seems like the structure needs to
>> accommodate this -- perhaps by electing a new core team every 3
>> months.  I propose we make this real simple -- everyone with commit
>> access gets one vote, and we elect a core team (5 people).  Eventually
>> this could be expanded to "members".  Thoughts?
>>
> 
> Maybe a such high rate of elections could be annoying, maybe better have 
> a valid board with also 3 or 4 members if someone move away ...
> I think is realistic that board members will be elected from more 
> present developers so probably the high rate of turn over shouldn't 
> affect the boards.

Needing to have elections every three months would suggest the project 
has other issues that need solving. Basically, when electing people to 
teams, one consideration should be ability to contribute at a good level 
over a 12 month period.

I'm still collecting names of people interested in becoming members of 
the eV. The current member list is here:

http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Organization

I'm going to propose the list to the current eV members late next week. 
We definitely need to expand the eV membership before making any real 
committee decisions.

Philip

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Re: progress on OE organization issues

[Cliff Brake]

A new OE server has set up for testing at:

new.openembedded.org

The git repo has been set up (accessible via git and ssh).  Please do
not commit anything to this repo yet.  Currently I'm just syncing from
the main server with rsync.

Next will be cgit followed by mediawiki, patchwork, and bugzilla.

Thanks to nslu2-linux folks for providing this server.

Thanks,
Cliff

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 8:44 AM, Cliff Brake <cliff.brake@gmail.com> wrote:
> We are making progress on some of the OE organizational issues.
>
> 1) we have been offered a VM at OSUOSL for hosting OE infrastructure.
> Same rack as kernel.org machines, and has a good reputation for
> support and uptime.  See
> http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Infrastructure for more
> details.
> 2) we are trying to push forward with some form of structure for
> membership, and effective decision making:
> http://wiki.openembedded.net/index.php/Organization.  Florian Boor has
> offered to take care of the membership tasks.
>
> Thanks,
> Cliff
>
> --
> =======================
> Cliff Brake
> http://bec-systems.com
>