Editorial Board, Take 2

Ernest Prabhakar ernest.prabhakar at gmail.com
Fri Nov 30 02:52:23 UTC 2007


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>
>




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