As I posted earlier [1], I don't consider the current "organization" to be legitimate at all. People who have watched this situation over the years might notice that the "guides" were supposed to be temporary, and that the "castaways" were supposed to be temporary... but nowadays, the "coordinators" now seem to consider themselves enshrined by default?
I warned the castaways that this would happen, that they themselves would come to think of themselves as leaders given a continuing power vacuum. Despite declarations that they do not actually consider themselves self-styled leaders, etc., [2], things are the same 10 months later. The castaways web site still lists the original "all your base belong to us" email as their mission statement.
I would suggest the Debian Constitution [3] as a great starting point for the Squeak community. It has worked well for them, and they have a similar organization to the Squeak group. Here's an article I wrote earlier on the idea, back when I was burning 5-10 hours per week to help with Squeak organization issues (time, I fear, I no longer can contribute):
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/45.html
The first change to think about is to elect leaders every year or maybe two, without term limits (open source volunteering is inherently limited anyway!). I also like the idea we've explored of having a release manager, and would further suggest that the release manager gets elected, too. Elections provide accountability.
Overall, the current setup is illegitimate and is ill-advised anyway, despite the quality of the individuals involved. For a healthy community, there's no better time than the present to improve our organization.
-Lex
[1] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-February/088316....
[2] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-February/088335....
I agree that the current organization is ill advised. I agree the Debian constitution is a good one, but I don't think its values are generally accepted by the Squeak community. So I think importing it wholesale will not work.
A constitution is good, elections are good, and a minimum requirement for making either legitimate (and even for the task we were "assigned" to - choosing candidates for coordinators) is a voting mechanism. I think Condorcet as implemented by Debian is a good mechanism, and as a "who gets to vote" we can use the web of trust provided by SqP.
I propose that getting this voting mechanism implemented be the first goal of this forum.
What do you guys think?
If we agree on this, I volunteer to guide (give initial specs and feedback) whoever is willing to implement it.
Unless someone objects to the above, I propose that this be the first thing this team does. Does someone here want to do the development? if not, I propose we go back to the list and ask for volunteers.
Daniel
Lex Spoon wrote:
As I posted earlier [1], I don't consider the current "organization" to be legitimate at all. People who have watched this situation over the years might notice that the "guides" were supposed to be temporary, and that the "castaways" were supposed to be temporary... but nowadays, the "coordinators" now seem to consider themselves enshrined by default?
I warned the castaways that this would happen, that they themselves would come to think of themselves as leaders given a continuing power vacuum. Despite declarations that they do not actually consider themselves self-styled leaders, etc., [2], things are the same 10 months later. The castaways web site still lists the original "all your base belong to us" email as their mission statement.
I would suggest the Debian Constitution [3] as a great starting point for the Squeak community. It has worked well for them, and they have a similar organization to the Squeak group. Here's an article I wrote earlier on the idea, back when I was burning 5-10 hours per week to help with Squeak organization issues (time, I fear, I no longer can contribute):
http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/45.html
The first change to think about is to elect leaders every year or maybe two, without term limits (open source volunteering is inherently limited anyway!). I also like the idea we've explored of having a release manager, and would further suggest that the release manager gets elected, too. Elections provide accountability.
Overall, the current setup is illegitimate and is ill-advised anyway, despite the quality of the individuals involved. For a healthy community, there's no better time than the present to improve our organization.
-Lex
[1] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-February/088316....
[2] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2005-February/088335....
[3] http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution _______________________________________________ Elections mailing list Elections@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/elections
Well, I agree in general, unsurprisingly! Votes are needed to legitimize things and to provide accountability. This in turn gives the people in charge a vital communication line to the people they represent. In turn, voting requires defining who gets to vote.
My only reservation about using a reputation system to grant voting rights. It is true that using Squeak People's reputation system would be objective and simple, albeit mysterious. If we lack alternatives then that's what we should go for. However, after a little experimentation, I see that SqueakPeople does not capture the people I think of as the Squeak community!
What I did was to use Google to search for some Squeak people I have collaborated with. The following people, happily, have accounts on the site:
Marcus Denker Stephane Ducasse Josh Gargus Ted Kaehler Dan Ingalls Andreas Raab Scott Wallace
On the other hand, the following people don't even have an account. They aren't merely ranked incorrectly. As far as SP is concerned, they do not exist!
Mark Guzdial Bolot Karimbaev Alan Kay KK Lamberty John Maloney Jeff Pearce Jeff Rick (in fact, no "Jeff"'s at all!) Kim Rose Jim Rowan Nathanael Shaerli
Aside from theoretical issues, our best reputation system in practice does not seem to define a very good set of voters. I think we would all agree that the people in the second list ought to get votes....
Here's an alternative for people to chew on. How about defining the initial voting group as anyone who meets one of the following criteria?
1 posted code to a Squeak bug tracker 2 posted to squeak-dev 3 made 1000 lines of Squeak code publically available 4 assembled an etoy with at least 3 lines of script in it 5 published a paper based on Squeak 6 gave a talk to 5+ people based on Squeak
How does this list sound as the crowd that gets voting rights?
-Lex
elections@lists.squeakfoundation.org