Hierachy of Decision making in a community
Locked
Hierachy of Decision making in a community
 
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
BJ Freeman wrote: > If this is truly a community, and there are people involved that really > have knowledge about something, What is the Hierarchy of Decisions based > on the ASF way? > > Or is this a vialed attempt to look like a community with only one > persons Making the decisions. > > From what I have seen certain individuals do commit and contribute, > without a problem. So this is not a one man show. > > What seems to be the questions is the guidelines for making decisions. > it is truly a community when all seem to have access to the guidelines. > > I think getting a set of guidelines for all to have access to would > alleviate the pressure felt when there is an disagreement. Still, I guess the basic structure is simple. The committers make the decisions. Of course, part of the responsibility of being a committer (as described in the OFBiz Committers Roles and Responsibilities page, linked to below), is facilitating community interaction and contributions, so a lot of this "decision making" is just review, feedback, and a yes or no decision on whether a patch is ready or not. So no, committers don't drive everything that happens in the project, but they are the filter that everything goes through to try to keep the project clean and vital. I'll talk more about the already established guidelines below. > I have purchased the Vol 1 and II and will begin reading them this > winter, maybe on the train ride to Portland. Which volumes are these? I'm not aware of any books (especially specific to OFBiz) that talk about decision making guidelines like this... Actually there are some books about managing open source projects that are interesting, like: "Producing Open Source Software" by Karl Fogel Note that this is a very general book and is not necessarily about the ASF way or the way things are done in OFBiz. It is good general commentary and I've found it interesting and helpful. It is available for download (I have a PDF sitting on my machine), but I don't remember exactly where I downloaded. > So if there are other documents that are involved, I will purchase or > read those. > > Just point me to the documents that define the framework for decision > making on this project. The best documents about this for ASF are on the ASF site itself. There are quite a few things to read through in different places, but a good place to start is: http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html The whole page is good, but the Meritocracy section is especially important. One things to keep in mind with OFBiz is that much of the software is business automation oriented and not technical in nature. You'll see a lot of stuff written about Linux and other very technically oriented projects and those are good places to start, but I've found that certain variations on those are very important for more business oriented open source projects, especially the very few such projects that are community rather than corporate driven. So, in other words, read lightly and consider it input to be refined and then applied. There are some OFBiz specific pages that have recently been established that cover these sorts of guidelines, so here they are: http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Contributors+Best+Practices A good source of information, BTW, is just glancing at the mailing list messages every so often. These documents, for example, and the direct result of discussions on the dev list and were announced there as well. -David |
smime.p7s (4K)
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
Chris, Are you implying that I might be the BD for OFBiz? That is rather flattering, though probably not entirely correct. I'm more of an administrative assistant to the community than anything else these days... especially with the ASF effort. On the technical side if you look at the commit history over recent months you'll see that I'm responsible for very few of them in reality. Much of what I do on the technical side is review commits and issues and comments for potential problems or opportunities that might go unnoticed, and comment on them as I can. If there is something potentially confusing or misleading I try to comment on that too, which was the case with OFBIZ-81 and my intent there was mostly to make sure the others involved with that (as I really wasn't involved with the development) did not get distracted by your comments. My hope is that those involved spent very little time on this distraction and were able to go about their efforts without worrying about it. I'm not saying that your comments were without value, otherwise I would not have bothered to comment. I am saying that for this particular issue they were a distraction and an encouragement to go in a direction that I though was simply bad for the project, so I asserted my opinion. In reality aside from my involvement with the initial design, direction, and "recruiting" (mostly facilitation) for OFBiz in the early stages of the project and my work to get it into the ASF family, I'm just another consultant with more financial obligations than resources who is hanging out in this little world of OFBiz (or rather, Apache OFBiz) trying catch scraps as they fall from the tables of larger projects based on the software. I'm as powerless to assert control over the project as anyone else. In fact I have the same power as anyone else to participate and introduce new resources and possibilities for the project. Well, in reality I have far less power than many because of other liabilities that take up so much of my time. The only difference is that I've done this enough times over the years with OFBiz that it is a fairly normal mode of operating and therefore has a better chance of being accepted. Aside from that, there is nothing special about the time or money I put into the project or the opinions I express. The real truth is I can only take credit for a minor part of OFBiz, and I'm only involved to a limited extent. Without the efforts of others, especially Andy Zeneski in the earlier years and Si Chen and Jacopo Cappellato in the last couple of years, OFBiz would simply not be what it is today. This discussion probably wouldn't even be happening because it probably would not have even been of interest to someone in your position. ;) -David Chris Howe wrote: > Thank you Ashish, that's great reading material. I > particularly enjoyed these two sections: > > http://producingoss.com/html-chunk/setting-tone.html#prevent-rudeness > > http://producingoss.com/html-chunk/social-infrastructure.html#benevolant-dictator-qualifications > > For those keeping tabs, this post is admitingly, > trolling - trying to elicit a response. Most previous > messages were offering criticism and more importantly, > solutions. > > --- Ashish Vijaywargiya <[hidden email]> > wrote: > >> David, >> Here is the book "Producing Open Source Software by >> Karl Fogel" link that is freely available........ >> http://producingoss.com/ >> >> Regards >> Ashish Vijaywargiya >> "David E. Jones" <[hidden email]> >> wrote: >> >> BJ Freeman wrote: >>> If this is truly a community, and there are people >> involved that really >>> have knowledge about something, What is the >> Hierarchy of Decisions based >>> on the ASF way? >>> >>> Or is this a vialed attempt to look like a >> community with only one >>> persons Making the decisions. >>> >>> From what I have seen certain individuals do >> commit and contribute, >>> without a problem. So this is not a one man show. >>> >>> What seems to be the questions is the guidelines >> for making decisions. >>> it is truly a community when all seem to have >> access to the guidelines. >>> I think getting a set of guidelines for all to >> have access to would >>> alleviate the pressure felt when there is an >> disagreement. >> >> I'm not sure what sort of guidelines would be >> applicable here. Because of human nature the >> possible problems arising are nearly limitless... >> >> Still, I guess the basic structure is simple. The >> committers make the decisions. Of course, part of >> the responsibility of being a committer (as >> described in the OFBiz Committers Roles and >> Responsibilities page, linked to below), is >> facilitating community interaction and >> contributions, so a lot of this "decision making" is >> just review, feedback, and a yes or no decision on >> whether a patch is ready or not. >> >> So no, committers don't drive everything that >> happens in the project, but they are the filter that >> everything goes through to try to keep the project >> clean and vital. >> >> I'll talk more about the already established >> guidelines below. >> >>> I have purchased the Vol 1 and II and will begin >> reading them this >>> winter, maybe on the train ride to Portland. >> Which volumes are these? I'm not aware of any books >> (especially specific to OFBiz) that talk about >> decision making guidelines like this... Actually >> there are some books about managing open source >> projects that are interesting, like: >> >> "Producing Open Source Software" by Karl Fogel >> >> Note that this is a very general book and is not >> necessarily about the ASF way or the way things are >> done in OFBiz. It is good general commentary and >> I've found it interesting and helpful. It is >> available for download (I have a PDF sitting on my >> machine), but I don't remember exactly where I >> downloaded. >> >>> So if there are other documents that are involved, >> I will purchase or >>> read those. >>> >>> Just point me to the documents that define the >> framework for decision >>> making on this project. >> The best documents about this for ASF are on the ASF >> site itself. There are quite a few things to read >> through in different places, but a good place to >> start is: >> >> http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html >> >> The whole page is good, but the Meritocracy section >> is especially important. >> >> One things to keep in mind with OFBiz is that much >> of the software is business automation oriented and >> not technical in nature. You'll see a lot of stuff >> written about Linux and other very technically >> oriented projects and those are good places to >> start, but I've found that certain variations on >> those are very important for more business oriented >> open source projects, especially the very few such >> projects that are community rather than corporate >> driven. So, in other words, read lightly and >> consider it input to be refined and then applied. >> >> There are some OFBiz specific pages that have >> recently been established that cover these sorts of >> guidelines, so here they are: >> >> > http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Committers+Roles+and+Responsibilities >> > http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBADMIN/OFBiz+Contributors+Best+Practices >> A good source of information, BTW, is just glancing >> at the mailing list messages every so often. These >> documents, for example, and the direct result of >> discussions on the dev list and were announced there >> as well. >> >> -David >> >> >> >> --------------------------------- >> Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make >> PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at > 1รฏยฟยฝ/min. > |
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
In reply to this post by cjhowe
Chris Howe wrote: > Tonality is difficult to construe from email, I'll > admit, but the wording of your reprimand of Si's date > format commit, has to make one suspect that you see > yourself in that light as well. What would be ideal is if there were more people watching the commit list to look for things like this... I'm happy to do so, but I do miss things or read over commit logs quickly when I'm busy. Ideally there would be a small army evaluating my commits just like any others... -David |
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
In reply to this post by cjhowe
Chris Howe wrote: > You weren't saying that my comment was without value > when you said in OFBIZ-81: "I wouldn't worry too much > about this comment. It shows a misunderstanding of the > data model and the patterns we use in various places." > and "Please don't hesitate to ignore this last comment > from Chris" > > What was I thinking? Again: general value is different from value in a context. In that context the discuss had little value in my opinion, which as you've noticed I rather enjoy freely expressing. ;) -David |
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
Administrator
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
Administrator
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
Re: Hierachy of Decision making in a community
|
|
| Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |