OSI board asleep at the switch?

[Brian Behlendorf]

For my part, it's overload.  I filter the messages into a box that
now stands at 1200 messages long, and I never have the 4 hours I would
anticipate it taking just to properly read and delete the messages in
there, let alone keep up.  I also have responsibilities to the Apache
lists (unread mail now standing at 3400 messages).

Bruce is right, if OSI is to claim to represent the interests of this
community, we need to be more responsive.  I've strongly considered
resigning due to lack of time to adequately represent this community by
responding to it.  I've held on because we appear to be making progress on
finding and accomodating an executive administrator - not someone to make
decisions for the board, but someone to handle a lot of the mechanics of
what we do.  For example, we should have a license tracking tool to
monitor submissions, take votes from the board (and the community), and
call and close voting periods.  We should organize some assistance on the
web pages, and perhaps open up the CVS tree for that content so others who
are motivated to help can easily do so.  Etc etc.

Though I can only speak for myself, the simple fact seems to be that
many of us "leaders" in the Open Source community have worked ourselves
into positions where we are now charged with showing that it can work.
The honeymoon is over - the current Linux stock prices and Linuxcare's
delayed IPO should make this pretty clear.  So I've been working 90 hour
weeks (15 hours/day 6days/week) to make both collab.net and apache.org
work; I apologize for not having another 2-5 hours a week to spend
on OSI.  

Since the Open Source method is to always empower those with itches the
ability to scratch them, I suppose what we could do to address this is
send a call out for assistance along these lines.  Anyone want to write a
pile of PHP to build a license submission management tool?  (No, I do not
want to use gnats, jitterbug, or bugzilla for this, thanks)  Is anyone
*serious* about wanting to help the web pages?  (we get inquiries, we ask
for suggestions on what to change, we never get a response back).  Are
there any other things we should be doing, as OSI, that we are not, and
that people would volunteer to help out with?

I am very open to suggestions.  I have not cleared this query with the OSI
board at all; this is me asking independently, so do not confuse this with
a formal invite from OSI to grant access to all comers.  But I think I can
speak for the board to say we realize things are broken, and need help,
but need help figuring out what the best solution is.

Thanks.

	Brian



On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Matthew C. Weigel wrote:
> I am hoping also that the difficulty so many have had with unsusbscribing is
> due to similar issues.  I experienced this recently myself, when I noticed
> that I hadn't seen an OSI board-member post in quite some time, nor indicate
> they'd read a single blessed thing.
> 
> The directions to unsubscribe don't work, and while I've tried to be polite
> and simply delete everything as it comes, it's gotten annoying when heated
> discussions ensue.
> 
> On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Bruce Perens wrote:
> 
> > I'm told privately that this is incompetence and not conspiracy. But that
> > doesn't make it any less of a problem. We need to track this.
> > 
> > 	Thanks
> > 
> > 	Bruce
> > 
> > 
> 
>  Matthew Weigel
>  Programmer/Sysadmin/Student
>  weigel+ at pitt.edu
> 

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