Editorial Board

[Lawrence Rosen]

Hi Zak and others,

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

I don't want to put a damper on Zak's otherwise wonderful idea to set up an
Editors List ("Editorial Board") for OSI. There is much to commend it and
Zak himself has proven its worth already by triaging lots of issues using
the new procedure. My concerns can be alleviated with some changes in
people's roles. 

1. We should assign to a group of trusted people the task of condensing the
otherwise free-wheeling license-discuss emails into an issue tracking system
and database, just as Zak has proposed. The vocal participants already on
the license-discuss list are eminently qualified to work together to capture
the key issues, eliminating for everyone's benefit the noise that often
accompanies those emails. These people need not be experts yet, and
certainly not lawyers, but they should be competent to pick out the wheat
from the chaff. I could name quite a few obviously interested folks who
already read (and often send) emails to this list. Let them do the triage.
These volunteers can work together, as publicly as license-discuss already
permits, to be sure that issues aren't lost or ignored. Are there any
volunteers?

2. There is a mostly quiet group of experts who lurk on this list (I won't
name you now but you know who you are!). They often avoid speaking up
because it generally results in even more noise. Those people should
volunteer (or be appointed?) to participate on an Editorial Board. They can
read the summarized issues in the tracking system and respond in writing as
their time and expertise permit. I assume responses will be deemed to be
individual and not representative of that Editorial Board member's company,
firm or affiliation, and NOT LEGAL ADVICE. Any interested in serving on such
an Editorial Board should please respond to this email, privately or
publicly, so we can determine if there would be enough talented
participation to make such an effort worthwhile.

3. The collective responses of the Editorial Board can be used to create an
OSI FAQ, or perhaps one will automatically evolve out of the comments posted
in the issue tracking system through the wonders of Web 2.0 technology. In
any event, the result of the efforts by 1 and 2 should be a compendium of
expert comments about specific open source issues, with a high
signal-to-noise ratio.

4. For issues relating to license approval and the like, the public comments
of the Editorial Board to issues collected by the triage agents from
license-discuss can serve as input to the Board of Directors when they vote.

/Larry


> -----Original Message-----
> From: zak.greant at gmail.com [mailto:zak.greant at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Zak
> Greant
> Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 7:48 PM
> To: License Discuss
> Subject: Re: public? Re: Call for Votes: New OSI-Editors List
[LR:] <snip>