[GRASS5] Proposal: RFC 1: Project Steering Committee Guidelines

[Paulick Consult]

So far I understood, 

1) it is not possible/usable to set up planning papers due to the complexity 
of the topics 

2) a voting system will control the use of code and should reflect the 
amount of contribution to the system 

3) the committe should cover legal issues without/(with a minimum) of 
organisation and money on a volunteer base 

4) the licence policy will be handled by the committee 

Each topic has his own charm and motivation, but combining them to a formal 
commission will lead to noting really useful: 

 -> without strategic/tactical/operational plans, there is almost nothing to 
vote on 

 -> without a non-profit organisation, there is no way to cover legal issues, 
including the handling fo licence question. And: wearing the hat means 
taking the risks. 

 -> voting on code/quality of code is/may be very discouraging when the code 
is provided by volunteers. 

While "growing wild" over decades, I would say a control committee will not 
do any good to grass on the long term. I'm not at all in doubt that it will 
work fine today with today's people - but the chance to control may bring 
new people into the game, following entire different incentives. 

So is there really a need to implement some "exclusive control club"? Never 
change a running system - and grass development seems to be running quite 
well. 


Mit freundlichen Grüßen / With kindest regards 

Stefan Paulick 


http://www.urbeli.com
mailto://stefan.paulick@urbeli.com
/*----------------------*/ 

 

 


Hamish schrieb: 

>> The decisions of the 'executive committee' you suggest can have
>> bigger long term impact on the project than decisions of 'technical
>> committee'. 
>> 
>> Can you explain better what exactly are your reasons to exclude
>> most of contributors (you expect 5-7 persons in committee)
>> from decision making on issues you want to assign to
>> the 'executive committee'?
> 
> My thoughts were mostly not about strategic votes but who would be
> legally responsible if GRASS became registered as a non-profit
> corporation (e.g. so individual contributers have some legal shielding;
> financial dontations are easier, ...). If we want to defensively
> register a trademark or register a domain does this have to be done by,
> and under de facto control of, the project leader only? At the other end
> it is impractible to have 50 people .. maybe not, many co-ops exist.
> Maybe it would be making double work for ourselves and it's better to
> pass this sort of thing off to OSGeo board to hold?
> ?? 
> 
> Certainly it is very bad for important decisions to be made in private
> by a few people, I wasn't thinking about that. 
> 
> 
> I am more interested in finding an answer to the general voting rights
> question- 
> 
> Anyone who has committed something to CVS* in the last year can vote?
> * plus bug tracker, documentaion, translation maintainers too, somehow.
>   (who else do I forget? Packaging teams?) 
> 
> 
> If we just set up some voting schedule and results are too wild, how can
> changing it later be seen as anything but a power-play by some? It's very
> important to get this right the first time. 
> 
>  
> 
> Hamish 
> 
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