Topic: Section One of the proposed constitution

[RonM]

As promised, here is the first section of the constitution, proposed by the contribsreorg, and the contribs team. Please feel free to respond and let us know what you think. Future sections will be posted in their own thread as soon as they're ready.

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!!!SME / Contribs.org Draft Constitution Proposal -
(18May2005)

!!Goals
The primary goals of formally organizing the
contribs.org community are to:
1) Foster and support the activities of the SME Server community of users and developers
2) Encourage communication and collaboration between community members
3) Provide for the continued growth and viability of the SME Server distribution

In this proposal, the contribs community will formally organize to provide support for the SME server developers as well as organize and participate  in projects and initiatives to improve support, documentation, training, contributions, marketing and promotion of the distribution. It is hoped that the close level of cooperation between all parties will allow the community to have and provide input into the future of the SME Server.

To support these goals, we have tried to limit the amount of detail in this document to what we believe is necessary to provide structure and resolve conflict when organizational or procedural issues arise.  Where possible, a minimalist approach will be taken, with specific details left to supporting documents.

All of the positions and roles described in this document are staffed by volunteers, who provide their time and skill for the benefit of us all. It is expected that due notice will be taken of this fact by all levels in the organization, and allowances made for conflicting duties and commitments.

In particular, production timelines should be in the form of goals rather than strict deadlines. It is hoped that volunteers will not make commitments here that they can't keep (and they will graciously accept help from others or offload some duties when it makes sense to do so).

!Acknowledgments
A complete list of all the people to whom we are indebted, starting with GNU/Linux, would fill a book.
However, it is especially important to acknowledge our debt and our gratitude to the following people/organizations:

Joseph Morrison/e-smith, Inc. - first he dreamed it, then he made it happen
Mitel Networks, Inc. - for saving it, then for setting it free. Mitel continues to support ongoing development of the SME server.

For providing the base distribution to the linux community:
Red Hat, Inc.
Fedora Legacy
CentOS

It is our intention to behave ethically and responsibly with these contributions, and to respect the licenses of all software included in the
distribution.

!Top Level Organization

The SME server organization will be composed of three primary groups:
   #Developers - (people who actually work on the code, develop releases and evaluate security issues).
   #Communications - (people who collect, update and publish documentation.  The contribs.org site is included in this group).
   #Administrative - (people who deal with legal and monetary issues {if any}, deal with the organizational and reporting structure issues, domain and trademark registration, resolve inter-group disputes, etc.)

The standard language of written, IM, teleconference, etc. communications between officers shall be English.
All dates will be written with the month in words, e.g. 16 May 2005
Contribs.org respects and encourages the participation of everyone. No harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, place of national origin, or gender will be tolerated.

!!Main Organizational Structure
   The SME organizational structure will be defined as follows:

!Leadership committee

This committee will be composed of the group leaders
from each of the three primary groups  (3 total).  The duties of this committee are:
     *organize and conduct any voting and polling required for group buy-in of any major organizational or constitutional changes
     *set annual election dates, arbitrate and decide issues between groups
     *be the final arbiter of any disputes not resolved at a lower level.

Each member of the Leadership Committee shall have one vote on any committee decision. Any decision(s) made by the Leadership committee must be unanimous.

This group shall meet once a month by either an IM /teleconference / in-person chat on an agreed upon day OR shall correspond over the period of one week (the last week of the month) if email communications are to be employed. The group is empowered to include a secretary, meeting facilitator, community member, corporate steward, or any other person that is deemed necessary, to attend the meetings as a non-voting member.  Meeting minutes (or a summary) will be relayed to the community in a timely manner.

[kruhm]

You're missing a mission statement.

[RonM]

What kind of mission statement did you have in mind?

We did put this in a later doc:

The SME Server is a Linux server distribution focused on simplicity, stability, reliability, and security. It is built using only components that have an extensive track record in these areas. The server is designed to be maintained by people with little or no technical background.

Together with the first few lines above, it makes a mission statement of sorts. Is there something better?

I always did like the "make it as simple as possible, but no simpler" quote that e-smith.org posted.

RonM

[christiaan]

I would just like to say that it really is good to see this document as the beginning of SME organising itself.

[RonM]

Cool, Christiaan - Thanks!

[kruhm]

I don't have anything in mind in particular. I just remember from school that if you had a list of goals and no mission statement, it was an automatic failure.

While that was awhile ago and at the time thought it trivial, in real world organizations, and in my leadership roles, it proves necessary and effective. I watch everyday as organizations shoot themselves in the foot wasting resources going in directions outside of their purpose. It never comes out right.

In a world of seemingly never-ending choices of networking/server software, it's a simple statement as to what SME is. What it isn't. And what sets it apart from other projects. Lastly, it defines that strategy to be used.

It's also a litmus test against future growth so that the project doesn't splinter. As we have limited resources, we can't be going in all directions at the same time. There are many good additions/contribs that can be incorporated into SME but may not be appropriate. It's tuff because this is where most organizations lose the battle.

A good mission statement is just that; it is one statement, it is simple, it is understood by all and it is known by all.

I think that http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/Overview%20of%20SME%20Server is a good start as well as the posted document above. I also don't know if there is any documentation left over from mitel that may be borrowed as they seem to have done a fanastic job.

May something like: The SME server exists to provide easy-to-admin network services for small to medium enterprises (SME's).