Editorial Board

[Chris Travers]

On Nov 28, 2007 5:36 PM, Zak Greant <zak at greant.com> wrote:
> Hi Larry, Greetings All,
>
> On 11/28/07, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:

> > 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.
>
> I am in support of this (or at least, what I currently understand it to
be. :)

Ok, I think that part of the problem is that the proposal for *exactly* what
the editorial board is supposed to do is still a little vague.  I think this
needs to be formalized before we get to a lot of specifics or indeed really
try to determine what sorts of experts are needed.  FWIW, I think there
should also be a place for the general community to propose edits.  Am I
right that the right venue for that is license-discuss?  For example, I
would be happy to submit my thoughts on FAQ items as both an open source
developer who has contributed hundreds of thousands of lines of code to
projects (and does open source development full-time) and as a businessman
who has to address a lot of these questions frequently.  However, I don't
think I need to be an editor to do this.

Also a note here:  I would highly recommend removing the "what license
should I use" from the FAQ and replace it with "How should I choose a
license?"  As an open source developer, I find the former question something
which never has a generally applicable answer and the latter may actually
help.
>
> The Free Software Foundation has offered a service like this for years
> through the license compliance lab. I've volunteered with the service
> for several years and believe that it offers a tremendous amount of
> value to the community at large.

Do you mind if I contact you off-list for FSF compliance lab positions on
some of the GPL questions I have asked before?

> I would very much like to see the OSI equivalent of this service adopt
> the same service ethic. Too often novices post questions on the
> license-discuss list and receive little or no useful advice - I fear
> that they may leave more confused than when they arrived. By focusing
> on helping working developers solve real issues, we can help avoid
> this.

I think that the goal needs to be identifying general root questions (which
are not necessarily the same questions which are asked) and developing
useful resources.  Again, I am more than happy to help but given my
willingness to be controversial sometimes, I think it would be better (at
least for the moment) if my efforts are through standard means.  This would
help avoid the view of someone in a position of authority making grand and
controversial statements.
>
> > 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.
>
> This concerns me a bit. Why can't the experts use the same channels as
> the rest of the community?

First, I think that competent editors need to understand the issues they are
editing.  Note that one cannot edit these sorts of issues without having
personal points of view, so we need a diverse group of experts who can do
this.

At the same time, I think you are right that *most* of the real substantive
discussion needs to take place on an open list such as this one.  The editor
list needs to be more about consensus building about wording, coordinating
effort, and the like.

>
> Once we start managing the license approval discussions more
> effectively, the process should not be that painful.
>
> I don't wish to formally create several classes of license approval
citizen.

I think the key is to keep as much discussion on this list as possible.
However, I also think there needs to be a group of people who are willing to
do content editing, etc. and this group needs to be restricted.  In short
editors mean people who are approving content for the site.  The rest of us
can contribute our views and may even be able to enter content itself (for
example, if we were to use Drupal, we could allow anyone to enter content,
but editors might have the final say in editing/publishing it).

Does this make sense?

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
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