Bringing fdo.org to the next level

[Jasper Huijsmans]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 02:59:32PM +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 14:35 +0200, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> 
> [CUT]
> 
> > Yes, and then they all agree on something and make a powerpoint presentation 
> > to tell everyone else and then the discussion will start from the start again 
> > because everyone who wasn't involved finds flaws in the proposal, just 
> > doesn't like it, doesn't understand the reasoning for decissions and think 
> > it's all motivated by the hidden agenda of company BigFooBar.
>  
> What about letting these discussions happen first. And then let the
> people of such a board make decisions based on what can be learned from
> the discussions?
> 
> If a lot people disagree with the decision of the board, a new meeting
> can be setup to make a new decision. Until it's proven that the board
> members are incapable of producing a good proposal (and therefor should
> be reelected) or until a consensus is reached.
> 
> In stead of letting the board decide on a certain issue first, and then
> let discussions start. 
> 
> That way, I'm guessing it would be more predictable what the reasons for
> declining the decisions of the board will be.
> 
> 
> > Not to mention the inability of a project like KDE to agree on which person(s) 
> > would be suitable to represent KDE, the unwilingness of those persons to 
> > commit to such a board position and the months of discussion that that 
> > process would take.
> 
> Humble.. I didn't know that. Given the fact that the team of KDE
> developers produce high quality software, I honestly thought that such
> things within the KDE community are well organised. 
> 
> 
> ps. Persons who are unwilling to commit to such a board position,
> shouldn't have been elected for it in the first place.
> 
> 
> > So no, I don't think that's a good idea.
> 
> Ok :)
> 

Let me just add a 'me neither' here.

If you want the board to improve communication, that's a social problem and I
don't see how choosing a formal board would improve that. You still require
input from the relevant GNOME and KDE developers for everything. Trying to get
more people involved from all (read: both ;-) camps is a good cause, though.

If you want to improve decission making, that is certainly not going to work
with a board, since the only way to agree on a standard is by the major
players to implement it and the decission is therefore made within these
projects, not by any board.

The only way to improve standardization efforts is to get more involvement
from the developers of GNOME and KDE, that is get them interested and get them
to help out with the design and implementation. I really don't know how to do
that, but creating a board is certainly not the answer.

	Jasper