I was in the process of giving up. I wasn't particularly active on the
lists, but I didn't see anything happening either. The Pharo guys were
kicking ass and taking names, and the main Squeak group were muttering
amongst themselves without a release or even an update stream in
sight.

When the announcement that there was going to be a trunk repository
and a contrib repository was made, I suddenly had hope again. The fact
that there was a two-man release team that I didn't even know about
(being a noob, I guess) didn't make a whit of difference to me,
because they weren't shipping anything.

It's gravy now. I *love* clicking on the update button, and waiting
for something to break. Monticello still kinda sucks, but we'll fix
that eventually. The future is wide open and all that glitters is
gold.

Now we just need an MIT image.

REAL ARTISTS SHIP

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 5:09 PM, Phil (list) <pbpublist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 5, 2009, at 3:26 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
>
>> I pointed out to Keith on IRC a while ago that it was simply impossible
>> for the board to "break the rules" since we have never had any rules. He
>> has kindly suggested a possible set of such rules and I think that is a
>> good starting point for a discussion.
>>
>> In the page in the blog I have added some links to the rules or
>> organizations of other Free Software projects. Most other project have
>> no rules that I could find and even these are pretty informal.
>>
>> Given that our community is pretty small, that elections are frequent
>> (every 12 months) and that re-elections are very common (most of the
>> current board was part of the previous one), I don't think most of the
>> proposed rules would help very much. I'll make a brief comment on each
>> one:
>
> I generally agree with your interpretation/comments on items 1-8.
>
>>
>> 9) There should be a grievance procedure and an equal opportunities
>> policy including disability awareness
>
>>
>> I didn't attempt to paraphrase this because I didn't understand it.
>>
>
> This seems to be two different points (let's call them 9a and 9b though they
> should probably really be 9 and 10):
>
> 9a) a grievance procedure when someone feels that the preceding terms have
> been violated
>
> 9b) I *think* he's talking about the Board having some sort of obligation to
> attempt to work with limitations of individual contributors.  Keith made
> reference several times that he was unable to take one (or more) course(s)
> of action being suggested (in IRC) and at least a couple of board members
> *seemed* to understand what he was referring to (either that or they were
> taking his response at face value)
>
> The intent of these appears to be to have the Board make accommodations to
> the needs of individual contributors and to provide some sort of recourse to
> contributors should they believe that things aren't being handled properly
> at a finer level of granularity than 'wait for the next election cycle'.
>
>> One thing that Keith mentioned, a "vote of no confidence" followed by an
>> ad hoc election, didn't get included in this list. Without that I don't
>> see what the answer could be to "what happens if the rules get broken?"
>>
>
> I think a lot of that was/is the result of how the situation was handled.
>
>> Given that the next election is at most 12 months away and that any ad
>> hoc election would probably pick the exact same board that was just
>> kicked out, I am against such a rule. But without it, none of the others
>> "have any teeth".
>>
>> I would be happy with general principals rather than rules, and the
>> board has previous tried to define that:
>>
>> http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/our-mission/
>>
>> -- Jecel
>>
>>
>
> I agree that adding a lot of mandatory process and rules probably wouldn't
> have changed the outcome of this, or future, situations.
>
> Direction can change for any number of reasons (priorities, contributors,
> pressures internal/external, etc.) and when it does, just have an open and
> inclusive dialog about what and why things need to change.  Also,
> communicating ahead of time with any impacted parties, publicly or
> privately, would be a *very* good idea.  Those seemed to be the key things
> missing here as it appeared arbitrary, and frankly, rather cold in how it
> was carried out.  One can get away with that approach in a business where
> (presumably) people are being compensated to put up with it.  In a volunteer
> arrangement, not so much.
>
> I appreciate this open discussion taking place.  If nothing else, it is a
> worthwhile exercise to discuss Keith's proposal and see what, if any,
> changes people would like to see made in light of recent events.
>
> Phil
>
>



-- 
Ron