From: Mark L. <ml...@ra...> - 2009-03-08 16:26:23
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On Mar 4, 2009, at 11:02 AM, Frank Warmerdam wrote: > related to governance, and I don't know if that was addressed. > > """ > The other point I'd like to raise is where does the PSC discuss > decisions that need to be made? I'm on the ossim-developer list > and I don't recall ever seeing anything that looked like a PSC > discussion though I only lightly skim the list. The governance > document is ... brief ... which is ok I suppose, but I am still > looking for a sense that the governance structure is operating > rather than just notional. > """ > > I'm personally very comfortable that the mailing lists are active, > that there is a significant user community and things are generally > functioning well. But I'm still feeling governance - how decisions > are made - is opaque, and I don't recall any decisions made as a > community though I must confess I'm not following things closely. It is probably a fair criticism that the majority of PSC discussions occur face to face versus on the mailing list. OSSIM is probably somewhat unique in that the primary contributors all make their living developing OSSIM for professional services. Over the history of the baseline the core developers have worked for different organizations and companies, but have always operated as a virtual team. Three of the four PSC contributors work in the same room every day. Dave Burken works in another location and we attempt to meet for lunch at least once a month. Typically the discussion is on OSSIM and on improvements that we'd like to make. Most of the work that occurs on the baseline is driven by funded requirements and we do our best to summarize features that we plan to add and changes we intend to make. Garrett and Dave do a pretty good job of announcing on the list what they are thinking and what they intend to work on. In most cases there is little comment on their posts. We actively encourage contributions and periodically get fixes and enhancements from around the world. When the level of contribution and activity rises we try to quickly establish a module that the contributor can work in. Problems and fixes are reviewed fairly rapidly and merged into the system. Can we do a better job at communicating on the mailing list - certainly. We make a concerted effort to communicate our plans and thoughts and quickly respond to questions, comments, and suggestions on the mailing list. If you review the mailing lists archives you will find numerous examples where architectural or interface changes were announced by Garrett as areas that he intends to begin work on in an effort to seek out comments. We will continue to make a concerted effort to push more of this discussion on to the mailing list. We certainly are very open to questions, comments, and discussion on the list. I can't remember an instance where we didn't respond in a timely manner or rejected any reasonable suggestion or comment. Our intent is to be very transparent in everything that we are doing. Mark |