public? Re: Call for Votes: New OSI-Editors List

[Zak Greant]

Hi Larry, Greetings All,

On 11/27/07, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> You'll note that I responded late, waiting to see if perhaps there would be
> enough people agreeing to be editors and to see how the job would be defined
> to suit these people's skills and expertise. When I saw others agreeing to
> serve, I wanted to join them because I respect those individuals and their
> opinions (even when I sometimes disagree with them). But now that I better
> understand the editors' job, I don't want to do it and--

Fair enough.

> ... as I said in my
> previous email--I believe you are underutilizing the other editors who have
> already agreed to serve in this role.

I disagree.

My experience in open communities on the web is that healthy and
effective community mores flow from credible leadership who actively
demonstrate desired behaviors and who provide an example of how the
written rules for the group should be practiced.

Thus, I believe that there is a strong benefit to having a mix of the
most active participants and well-respected leaders steer the OSI
community and mailing lists towards a more productive (and friendlier)
state.

For example, if Allison or Brian or Mike or
fill-in-yer-favorite-person-here can do this humble diligence work,
then it shows others in the community (and those who could be in the
community) that the work is important and that it is not beneath
anyone.

> I thought at the time that the editors would be helping to identify and
> summarize legal issues that often get confused and argued about
> ineffectually on license-discuss. But that now is turned into a triage role,
> reading and capturing whatever nonsense or intelligence is spouted on
> license-discuss into a set of "issues" in a "database."

My view is that the editors will maintain the canon - the generally
accepted knowledge of the OSI community.

I agree that your greatest value is to discuss these issues rather
than to catalogue them.

However, we still need other experts who can recognize the issues for
what they are and deal with them appropriately.

> As in the past, when I find the topics interesting I'm happy to comment on
> legal issues raised by others, but I'm not happy to be the database clerk
> that captures and triages the issues into that database. Like an ER doctor,
> I'd rather be treating patients than sitting in the little cubicle next to
> the waiting room deciding who has a cold and who has pneumonia. That's not
> at all to disparage the important role played by the triage nurse, but the
> experts you've selected to be editors are more valuable in the operating
> room.

If, in this metaphor, we managed to get patients into the operating
room, I would agree. Currently, we are having great trouble triaging
patients - better to get the doctors fixing the current crisis then
worrying if the problem is truly worthy of their skills.

> How about nominating non-experts to be the triage database editors? Let them
> earn their credibility and open source stripes by doing that job well. We
> ought to be able to identify people who are on license-discuss and who enjoy
> reading (and sending) lots of email to the list. Perhaps a few of them will
> offer to be editors, to capture the essences of the issues posed on
> license-discuss. They can capture those issues into a database that the
> experts can comment on.

The nominations are open. However, I believe that non-experts -
without a good deal of coaching - will lack the ability to properly
triage and archive the issues. Also, I believe that I have good
reasons for wanting experts initially.

-- 
Cheers!
--zak