Topic: SME Community - Poll - should we have a formal structure?

[pfloor]

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[gregswallow]

I respect everyone who has given a contribution to the community, but I don't understand why people that lurk on the mailing lists and forums suddenly appear out of nowhere and demand changes to the way things are done.

That being said, I am for whatever will encourage more developers to contribute to SME Server, so if that requires a change then that's great, but if you want to change something, start by doing what you can with the methods already available on contribs.org - There are forums, mailing lists, wiki pages - so many tools to get things done - if that is really your intention.  You don't need Jeff's permission to use any of those tools.

Jeff is 100% right that the developers are the most necessary part of the community. Jeff/RSI and everyone that has helped maintain contribs.org, and the many people that contribute add-ons and help out people with questions in the forums are a close second in my books.

[Buddha_Joe]

but I don't understand why people that lurk on the mailing lists and forums suddenly appear out of nowhere and demand changes to the way things are done.

I personaly am new here.. New to using linux as well.. I try to answer questions in the forums and chat. I make it a point to look at posts that have not been replied to yet and make some sort of suggestion if I can so the person who made the post dosent feel like they are being ignored. Granted I have been out of the loop for a little while (been laid up for with a back injury) But I try to participate in a useful fashion as best I can. I know there are others doing the same..

I don't know about demanding anything.. Right now I see people trying to have a discussion.. Prehaps those that you are refering to as lurkers are only trying to throw out suggestions on how to improve and grow the community.. maybe they are not developers, artists or good at writing documentation. Maybe their Linux skills are not that great. so they try to contribute by tossing out ideas, is that a bad thing?

If these lurkers are tossing out ideas based on opinions resulting from lack of or faulty information, some one could always correct them by giving them or pointing them in the direction of accurate info.

[gregswallow]

Buddha_Joe,
I was not referring to you, just in general about some recent posts on the discussion mailing list that seems to be spilling over here.  Actually I probably should have chosen my words better - I'll leave my first paragraph of my previous post there, but in hindsight, it maybe would have been better left out.

[Buddha_Joe]

LOL... no offense taken greg.. I just threw that out there to identify my self since I have been away in case anyone was wondering who i was.. worry if that sounded like I was offended

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[Buddha_Joe]

Paul,

I don't think that was the intent.. It sounded more like he was just voiceing a concern to me.. Jeff mentioned in another topic earlier that there were something like 5000 registered users.. kind of hard to keep track of who's who.

[jcoleman]

Jeff please be honest.. Do you or the developers you speak of feel that we are stepping on your toes by having this discussion?

I can speak only for myself.  You are certainly not stepping on my toes by havng this discussion.

My question is whther or not the discussion is useful, not whether or not it is permissable.

I appreciate that many people require structure, I am just not sure that they can get it in THIS community.

-jeff

[wallyrp]

Good Morning,

One more thing and I promise to leave this mulberry bush forest of organizational ideas alone.

My whole point about polls and any organizational idea that is discussed involves people. When it is stated that there are x number of people registered here and official polls hardly garner any response, it speaks volumes. I don't know if there is a process in which the userlist is culled on a regular basis or not due to inactivity. Until there is a "quorum" of the users registered here, nothing will be done on a large scale.

My hats off to the people that organized and have responded to the release at hand as well as future releases. I personally haven't had the chance to download the beta copy yet.

Is there a hierarchy with names posted anywhere at this point? Posting the organizational structure at this point may provide some insight. When I say organizational structure, I'm talking the complete structure of this domain including SME.

On another note, if someone was to go build a site that deals with SME and the likes, would any consideration be made by contribs.org to donate the forums to them just like they were donated from Mitel to contribs.org and then from contribs.org to Lycoris?

[Buddha_Joe]

if someone was to go build a site that deals with SME and the likes, would any consideration be made by contribs.org to donate the forums to them just like they were donated from Mitel to contribs.org and then from contribs.org to Lycoris?

That's a good question.. Would contribs.org be willing to provide a copy of that data?

[girkers]

i have in another thread bantered with this idea of structure.  Everyone is entitled to there opinion and it is there own right to do what they like.

I would be happy to continue with the current structure (if that is the right word) if I knew who was doing what and who do I talk to for a particular issue/discussion.  E.g. who decides what pacakages are in the core release.

At the moment I can not find this information or where SME server is heading.

Without knowing where we are going, how do we know how to get there?

[Buddha_Joe]

if I knew who was doing what and who do I talk to for a particular issue/discussion. E.g. who decides what pacakages are in the core release.

This question has been asked several times.. I happen to run into one of the developers in the chat area and he gave me permission to share our disscusion with the community.

Here is some of what we talked about:

[slords] 7:09 pm: Looks like you've asked some good questions in the forums.
[Buddha_Joe] 7:09 pm: Thanks.. I'm trying not to be inflamatory
[slords] 7:10 pm: Any specific question you have for me?
[Buddha_Joe] 7:10 pm: I just want to understand better and try to make it easier for people to support
you developers
[Buddha_Joe] 7:11 pm: yeah... what does the current process look like lol
[slords] 7:12 pm: Really the lowdown of the 6.5 release is, I was sick and tired of nothing happening in
the community so I build my own ISO.  I was the one that did all the gathering of the rpm's and I'm the
one that had the say as to what went into the ISO and what didn't.  I asked a few people that I trusted
(Charlie, Greg) for input and took what they said into consideration but the ISO is really my internal
project.
[slords] 7:13 pm: Once I had it built I approached Jeff and told him I had an ISO and did contribs.org
want to support it.  He agreed and we are now where we are.

So it appears that there really is no structure at all.. which is why no one has answered any of those questions.

A lone developer got tired of inaction and took it upon himself to build a new ISO for himself..He then asked the opinions of people he trusted on his work and then offerd to make it available to everyone else (lucky for us)..

It wasn't some deep dark exlusionary process.. just someone who took iniative to do something for himself and afterward thought it would be a good idea to share it wth everyone.

I asked him what he felt about the dev process getting organized

[slords] 7:33 pm: If the community gets organized then that would be a good thing.
[slords] 7:33 pm: But it doesn't take the community getting organized to get things done.
[slords] 7:34 pm: I've been waiting for the community to get organized for well over 2 years now.
[slords] 7:34 pm: I got sick of it and went and did my own thing.

So I asked him about the effort that is jut starting at Sourceforge around SME

[slords] 7:40 pm: My understading is that we are going to host the source for the e-smith-...rpm files
and then others can download and compile the rpms and add them to whatever distro they want.
[slords] 7:41 pm: It will be the home of the base pacakges.  But it won't be the home of the iso.
[slords] 7:41 pm: So do you run any updates on your server?
[Buddha_Joe] 7:42 pm: see that is a clearly defined direction
[Buddha_Joe] 7:42 pm: m[y] box lol.. it's a mess
[slords] 7:42 pm: And it make it clearly defined what we provide and what we support.

[pcowley]

There will always be people who don't want to be part of any organisational structure in any way whatsoever, and that is OK too, membership of a group is not mandatory and all contributions would still be gratefully received.

Sorry, this is going to be another lengthy post <grin>.

In my opinion, all projects need:
- a commonly shared, clearly defined objective/goal/vision.
- a structure (at the very least a leader) to resolve issues, monitor progress, keep things on track etc
- a way of getting the work underway.
and that, ladies and gentlemen is the start of an organisation of shared common interest called a - COMMUNITY

What I see as the main qualities and reasons for having a formal rather than loose organisation are these:

1) A leader to:
-  be a manager of the project and collaborate on defining its vision - in our case the SME Road-Map and release dates etc. The main task of the SME Server Community Leader involves coordination and communication.
- Gives encouragement and guidance where needed.
- The leader must have the backing (by voting) of the community.   Not voting is not counted as a vote against, it is just not counted at all.

2) Administrator performs these sorts of tasks (from the proposed constitution):
- Creating the visibility of the organisation structure, contact details, team member lists and most importantly maintaining the WIP (work in progress) lists and who is working on it.
- Conducting votes and polls for the community. -- notably the Community Leader elections, but also any other votes that are run (General Resolutions, for example). Running a vote also entails determining the number and identity of the people eligible to vote, for the purpose of calculating quorum.
- Standing in for other Officers The Secretary can stand in for the Leader, together with the Chairperson of the Technical Committee. In this situation, they may jointly make decisions if they consider it imperative to do so -- but only when absolutely necessary and only when consistent with the consensus of the Developers.
-  If there is no Secretary or the current Secretary is unavailable and has not delegated authority for a decision then the decision may be made or delegated by the Chairperson of the Technical Committee, as Acting Secretary.
- Interpreting the Constitution - The secretary is also responsible for adjudicating any disputes about interpretation of the constitution.

3) Technical Committee for problem resulution:
- Write up a summary of the disagreement, preferably agreeing it with your opponent, and send it to the bug tracking system. If there is no bug for the dispute yet, file one.
- The committee will discuss your question on the committee mailing list. We will not CC all of our discussion to the bug report, though we may CC the participants. Anyone else who wishes to do so may subscribe to the SME_committee mailing list and see our deliberations.
- The committee will aim to make a decision as soon as possible. In practice this process is likely to take many weeks, or perhaps longer. If the question is particularly urgent please say so.
- Sometimes, one side or other is convinced, during the committee's deliberations, by the merit of the other side's arguments. This is a good thing! If it happens, the committee need not make a formal decision, and the bug report can be closed, or reassigned, as appropriate.

4) Team leaders:-
- Answer questions and give guidance on their area of responsibility
- Encourage team members to work on the high priority tasks first in preference(identified in the Road Map most likely) but does not exclude people working on their particular issue.
- Keep in contact with the developers and check for and encourage progress on their work.

It may seem unnecessary for all this formality and administrivia, but democracy is such that if people are not elected and don't have any authority, no one has to power to make any decisions for the common good of the whole community - this is not a community at all, it  is just a group of individuals with a common interest! This is the worst and the slowest way to make progress.  

cheers
Pete
down under in Wellington, New Zealand

[gbaird]

It would be a big problem to change to Debian most all people would need to learn a new system

The Redhat based system is still alive with Fedora

SME is a great piece of work and does want most of us need

Debian is a different dog and would require a complete re-tooling of SME

my 2 cents !

[pcowley]

It would be a big problem to change to Debian most all people would need to learn a new system

The Redhat based system is still alive with Fedora

SME is a great piece of work and does want most of us need

Debian is a different dog and would require a complete re-tooling of SME

my 2 cents !

I think you have misread the emails.

There is no talk of changing to Debioan, what is being discussed is the idea of an organisational structure, possibly based on the way the Debian community organises itself.

Cheers
Pete