Editorial Board, Take 2

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi Larry,

Thanks so much for your input.  To clarify, my original vision for an  
OSI Editors Board is very much like yours, but due to travel and other  
commitments I wasn't able to participate in most of these discussions.

At any rate, I have gone through and more-or-less completely rewritten  
the wiki to match my understanding of what the OSI Editors should be  
doing:

https://osi.osuosl.org/wiki/editor

In particular, given the "community elders" like yourself that I  
nominated for this position, I don't think we need very rigid  
guidelines or requirements.  My expectation is to simply give y'all  
the tools to contribute effectively, and let you do what comes  
naturally. :-)

I've also collected all the other handbooks and resources under a new  
"help" section:

https://osi.osuosl.org/wiki/help

Let me know where additional clarifications would be helpful.

Best wishes,
Ernie Prabhakar
OSI Reorganizer


On Nov 28, 2007, at 12:05 PM, Lawrence Rosen wrote:

> 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>
>