OSDevCon Presentation
Here are the
slides from my talk at the OpenSolaris
Developer Conference in Prague
earlier today. From an information perspective, the slides are pretty
much useless. They are just full bleed images with almost no content
whatsoever. I talked about community building from a governance
perspective and made up much of the specifics as I spoke. I had a
specific outline in mind, of course, but I just tried to tell some
stories about what I've experienced on the project -- including the
things we've done right, some of the things we've done wrong, and where
I think we're going. I was more assertive about my own opinions than
I've ever been, which was intentional, so I hope it came across ok. I
was a bit long winded (as I am in writing), so I think I have to
improve that. I'm the only non-technical speaker at the entire
conference, though, so I figured I'd try something new with the full
frame images with very few words. I think I'll continue this technique
for a while because I have a lot of photos I can talk about and that
offers a remarkable amount of flexibility to improvise during a talk.
But this was ultimately a discussion about getting involved in the
OpenSolaris project -- either in governance itself or in any number of
roles that will help you earn Membership and Core Contributor status in
the community. In many ways, governance is just another form of
community development, and there are many social, strategic, and
technical factors involved. The governmental systems on OpenSolaris are
still evolving, though, and some of the issues have been controversial.
This is normal. It's simply the evolution of a complex and unique
engineering project, one in which a multi-billion dollar corporation is
opening its core product and is building a global community while still
maintaining critical business operations.
There have been three clearly definable phases of governance on the
OpenSolaris project:
(1) Sun's role in creating the CAB from within the Pilot Program, the
development of (and confusion about) the Charter and Constitution, the
redefinition of the CAB to OGB and the expansion of its mandate and
extension of its term, and the ratification of the Constitution and
election of the first OGB. This period of time ranges from late 2004 to
March 2007.
(2) The first elected OGB begins normal operations with a Constitution
that doesn't necessarily reflect reality, but many people on the board
and in the community make a good faith attempt to make things work. The
OGB controls no resources and key parts of the project are still
internal to Sun. A community reorganization is specified and attempted
but stalls due to disagreements and inflexible infrastructure issues.
Trademark disputes over a new Sun distro lead to more arguments about
the project's lack of openness in some areas. This second phase was
March 2007 to March 2008.
(3) The second OGB takes office after a significant community argument
with Sun. Most members ran on a platform to reform the governance and
reorganize the community for two key reasons: the OpenSolaris community
and Sun need to be in sync about the project, and the structure of the
OpenSolaris community needs to reflect the reality of how the community
actually functions. The re-org can now take place because the
OpenSolaris engineering infrastructure team has resources to update the
website, move the gates external, and finish the work necessary to make
OpenSolaris an open development project -- which was the goal all
along. The reorganization is not fully specified yet, and the
discussion moves slowly. Sun's executive engineering management engages
with the OGB as well as the community. This current phase started from
March 2008.
The Reorganization
Currently the OpenSolaris community is structured around Members,
Community Groups, and Projects. Community Groups sponsor Projects and
grant Membership status to Core Contributors. There are some odd
groupings, as well, such as user groups, which we have stuffed into
Projects due to site constraints. Also, we have many Community Groups
that were crafted back in the Pilot Program that really ought to be
Projects today or consolidated into other Community Groups. And Sun has
yet another grouping called Consolidations, which doesn't fit the
Constitution. The website doesn't reflect the Constitution, too, since
the site per-dated the Constitution and its evolution stalled due to
resource constraints. So, the OGB's community reorganization has to
address all of these issues.
To begin the process of discussing the issue, the OGB recently proposed
interpreting the term Community Group to mean a class of groupings in
the community, not a group itself. In other words, Projects,
Consolidations, Special Interest Groups, and User Groups could
potentially make up the new groupings and they could have relationships
with each other in a web-like structure instead of the current
hierarchical structure. To establish some consistently across the
community under this proposed system, a new OGB committee would be
formed to create standards for granting Membership status.
The reorganization idea has already generated several counter
proposals, but the general concept is moving in the direction of
offering more flexibility for different types of groups and crafting a
system that reflects how OpenSolaris developers work rather than
imposing an artificial structure on top. The reorganization and the
infrastructure work necessary to support the changes will probably take
a year, so there is plenty of time to get involved and contribute. The
site can not be changed rapidly, and neither can a governance decision.
The site's current monolithic architecture is being updated in stages
to a new modular architecture, but it still must support current
operations. And the community will have to participate in and finally
approve any new governance structure.
Finally
The OpenSolaris governance process should define how the community
operates. Therefore, it's at the core of how people participate in the
project. It should not get in the way of participation, but it should
offer opportunities for many people to contribute in many ways.
That's it.
Update: Here is the video of my session:
part 1, 30 mins
part 2, ~40 mins
Also available in iPod video format:
To whom it may concern,
Victory: HP? :)
Love,
HP
Posted by HPMark on June 27, 2008 at 02:06 AM JST #
Making a presentation out of pictures is definitely a good idea. I've recently seen a presentation about the Sun (a star, not a company) by Lukas Machacek's grandfather and all the slides were just pictures, with some small comments around. And the slides were going very fast, which was also adding to the interestingness. I was amazed how a presentation can catch the audience.
Posted by Petr Tomasek on June 30, 2008 at 11:10 PM JST #