[csw-maintainers] Thematics month proposal

[Sebastian Kayser]

Hi Peter,

Peter Bonivart wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Trygve Laugstøl <trygvis at opencsw.org> wrote:
>> I recall the same. A few was "handled already", other where "almost
>> done" (like lots of the GAR stuff). Some of the matters are internal
>> stuff (like the exact details of the release process), but most of them
>> are public and should probably be moved to William's page (with a status
>> note if applicable).
> 
> The technical stuff is not the problem, I'm not worried about that.
> What worries me, even more after your post, is that there seems to be
> some unexplainable need for secrecy. Why does the release process need
> to be handled internally? And what does that mean? The board? Are you
> involved? Why aren't the rest of us worthy of knowing what goes on?

good that you bring the secrecy concern up. It might be of concern to
others as well. Maybe more detailed communication about how exactly the
meeting was taking place and what all of us took away from it could have
been helpful to avoid that assumption.

So here we go, from my humble point of view:

First of all, there is no hidden agenda, no secrecy, no Pinky and Brain
world domination theories, no nothing. Maybe Othmar could jump in, who
as a then-OpenCSW-user attended the meeting and volunteered to take the
"protocol" during the meeting. It should have been pretty obvious from
his point of view (as a bystander), what was going on.

Take about 10 engineers, throw them into a room and let them talk about
organizational stuff like the bylaws and you will realize very soon,
that it will take a lot of (partly painful) time to figure out things.
Put on top that people are all very excited about how to improve certain
aspects of the project and you will find yourself in very interesting
discussions, with _lots_ of different aspects.

However, it's not until close to the end of the day and heaps of cups of
coffee later that you realize that on the one hand the bylaws are
finalized (*whopee*), but a lot of other things could have used a more
stringent dealing with and you wish you had Sunday to talk everything
over again.

> I hear that it's being handled but I simply don't believe it until I see it.

So when others say that they remember your suggestions being handled
during the Saturday i think it is because some of them were touched, but
less in a "now take two hours to deal with Peter's suggestions" way than
in a "part of the whole discussion" way.

This goes for most of the technical stuff also by the way. When
Alexander Maier and i went to the meeting, one of the major reasons was
to hear the technical GAR session from Dago. We didn't even get as far
as that (and GAR had been scheduled for 14:00).

Needless to say that tangible results besides the written bylaws were
blurred in the fuss of all that has been discussed. At least from my
point of view. Someone correct me please in case they feel otherwise.

Still it was very nice to meet the other people and to realize that
maybe next time a better organized and less packed schedule, attendees
with less exhaustion from traveling, and maybe a moderator could be
useful. :)

With William setting up thematic months and the activeness we have on
the maintainers list right now i think it should not be a problem to
bring up certain points up again (especially any concerns about
secrecy), get them discussed and formalized in a way.

Sebastian