[GRASS-dev] Re: [OTT_OSGEO] GRASS OSGEO Steering Committee

[Sampson, David]

 Alright, some thoughts from the peanut gallery



  o There needs to be an accepted mechanism for making decisions.
1. If you want something to happen then you vote for a movement
2. if you don't want something to happen, you vote against
	* if you vote against you have a given period of time to offer a
realistic alternative otherwise your vote against is cancelled
3. The question would be who votes, what is quorum, and how to solve
stalemates
4. is there a voting system that works like bugzilla?

  o The mechanism needs to be followed!
1. keeping it simple, open and transparent

  o Someone needs to be designated as the spokesperson for the GRASS
    project, who will be considered responsible for it to some degree
    in reporting back to the board, and that it follows it's own rules.

I hope I don't speak for anyone, but here it goes. I have always
thought, Ohhh Markus will take care of this, that , the other thing...
But I think this is a great opportunity for someone to jump in without
fear that Markus will be left out. I think he has his hand QUITE full
and could really use some help from the community at large. The way I
look at it is that if the lead developer and organizer takes on
everything then that keeps GRASS on shaky ground...

A steering committee headed by someone that can learn from the big
honchos and bridge between the users and developers...

Perhaps we need some active community members to nominate some people.
On the other hand maybe some appropriate people can step up.  I'd like
to see someone that has worked with grass through the ages and
understand some of the challenges. 

On my third hand (ok my foot) what about someone that has worked close
with Markus, one of the big code contributors who are in regular
positions of suggesting direction and making decisions of where to go.

Just some thoughts


  o Core OSGeo rules (ie. not improperly incorporating others code into
    the code base) need to be followed.

Is this not already a given?... Is GRASS not a truly open source and
ethical project? Have there been cases in the past to worry about the
future?... How did this happen? What mechanisms are in place to prevent
it?.... Is this not something that GRASS could benefit from joining
OSGEO?

  o The process needs to be open to additional contributors in some
    fashion.

How is this different than the current process?

Cheers





-----Original Message-----
From: grass-dev-bounces at grass.itc.it
[mailto:grass-dev-bounces at grass.itc.it] On Behalf Of Frank Warmerdam
Sent: July 25, 2006 14:45
Cc: grassuser at grass.itc.it; grass-dev at grass.itc.it
Subject: [GRASS-dev] Re: [OTT_OSGEO] GRASS OSGEO Steering Committee

Sampson, David wrote:
> So. Who is up for helping out to allow GRASS to move forward into 
> becoming an official and accepted member in OSGEO?

Dave,

Thanks for bringing up this topic again - OK, I did do some browbeating
to get you active on the topic. :-)

> If you have questions, comments or reservations to GRASS's involvement

> in OSGEO let them be known so we can work them out. I personally had 
> initial reservations that were mostly due to lack of information that 
> were nicely attended to by the president of OSGEO (Frank Warmerdam) 
> who attended our meeting and is also a contributor to the GRASS 
> project (GDAL/OGR).
> 
> I propose a separate mailing list for business referring to the PSC.  
> I propose psc at grass.osgeo.org if the owner of _http://grass.osgeo.org_
agrees.
> 
> I would also like to hear some chatter as to opinions on the whole
matter.

I feel it would undermine the need to get the broad community behind a
PSC to segregate the discussion from the main grass mailing lists.  The
problem so far hasn't been that PSC discussions have overwhelmed the
available the existing mailing list traffic.

There were some reservations raised a few months ago about the PSC.  I
wonder if the folks with those reservations could propose some specific
changes to Markus' first draft of a PSC RFC.

 From the OSGeo point of view the key issues are:
  o There needs to be an accepted mechanism for making decisions.
  o The mechanism needs to be followed!
  o Someone needs to be designated as the spokesperson for the GRASS
    project, who will be considered responsible for it to some degree
    in reporting back to the board, and that it follows it's own rules.
  o Core OSGeo rules (ie. not improperly incorporating others code into
    the code base) need to be followed.
  o The process needs to be open to additional contributors in some
    fashion.

Beyond the above, the GRASS community has a great deal of flexibility in
deciding how to approach governance.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------
---------------------------------------+------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF,
http://osgeo.org

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