OGB Meeting Minutes, Aug 20, 2009

Attendance - regrets: JohnP, Peter
Michelle
JBeck
Valerie (first half-hour)
Simon
Jim Walker

guests:
Derek Cicero
Bonnie Corwin
Jim Grisanzio

secretary: Deirdré Straughan

auditing: Mark Martin

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Calendar items

MO added phase 2 upcoming date. No update on when we're having a developer summit.

JBeck updated agenda to reflect fact that we end at 10:30.

JW - putting together a list of OGB accomplishments for future OGBs and for us to know what we've done so far and what we have left to do

AI Review

• •  * Peter: classify defunct communities into buckets (done)
  •  * Peter: update OGB policy 2009.008 and add to approved policies (done)
  •  * Valerie: send mail with writeup of in memoriam web page for site and process for adding to it
  •  * Michelle to email potential facilitators for Approachability - not yet, but Peter emailed them for signs of life in his cleanup messaging - JBeck responded "We're dead, please kill us."

• •  * DS Contributor grants (should bugs be filed for all of these?) - TBD, was on vacation - check emails and bugs filed

                o Documentation: michelle (core contributor)
                o Storage: CC grants: jforte?? 

Bonnie - backwards sync was set up between Auth and Tonic, but not between Auth and Poll yet. Please don't make any changes to poll until a sync is in place. Bonnie will inform D when it's ready.

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re. last week's website meeting, JW problems attending meeting due to change of dial-in

MO - did not discuss roles and responsibilities, minutes are posted on website discuss

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Discussion with Bonnie's Team

JW as discussed in email, problem with using constitutional roles for website access

Bonnie let's back up a half step. Michelle asked me to come and answer questions. We tried to come up with a solution that takes into account current state of reality while leaving path open to change. Would like today to gather one set of concerns that we can work. First concern seems to be not using const defined role names...

JW not using them for purposes of website access. Constitutionally we need to track CCs

Bonnie we can absolutely track voting members, CCs and C grants. Trying to address concern on use of role names.

Val - Peter's 4 questions posted yesterday to ogb-discuss

Derek way it works today there is an electorate collective. within commy group tehre are CCs and Cs, lists have been migrated to CC and C lists. That does define access. A contributor can edit pages on the site, but does not have to be core. There needs to be a process to give someone editing rights. There is = contributor process.

JW That's perfect, keep it that way. But ...

Bonnie yes we chose to use const defined role names. The concern is using those names in AUTH.

JW this was the beginning point that those terms should not be used. 

MO to be fair we have been talking about this for a few months. We are not in agreement that this will be a problem.

SP I think Jim's got a valid point which is that probably unintentionally the result of that conflation of terms is that groups such as ON that have been liberal in CC creation, this is obviously a problem. I would be delighted for Bonnie to look into it. But it's a waste of time to try to adapt system to old constitution.

JW we can stop [the discussion] right now if Bonnie is in agreement that this is an issue and change the terms to Editor and Leader. If you can track the constitutional roles of CC and C separately. You can't use C either because it's set up as C for life because you don't want a website editor for life.

Valerie - Agreed - there is a process for removing C for life, and it's very drawn out.

Derek - answer is that we go back and see what we can do in the time we have left to address this. My concern is that if we're going to make that change things like Editor are not going to help. Can't be task-specific names either. We need to avoid issue - why AUTH was built - not to cram access rights into AUTH. I think the term Editor can't work, but could something else? We'll look at it and make a proposal to address your concerns but make clear from our side that AUTH can be used as a global provider of permissions, not an application level holder of roles and data.

JW I see your point, don't care what terms you use

Derek we'll put together a specific proposal. It may not be perfect but will at least get closer to alleviate the confusion

JW would also like you to change the "per the constitution" wording in transition role doc. Doc currently makes false statements about what constitution requires. It does not require use of const for web access rights.

Derek this is where our debate goes off the rails. We'll put the proposal together and the documentation will change as a result.

Jim - one point of confusions stems from fact that current site predates constitution. 2nd, all last year the prev OGB was discussing new constitution, I was very clear that we were building new site based on new constitution, with flexibility to change unlike current app. Phrase "based on constitution" was well understood at the time. Legit to argue how you implement that. We're all clear that we could have some flexibility, we can talk to our team and see where we are. 

Jim Is the OGB ready to update the constitution in March?

JW We're already ready to update, this has nothing to do with new constitution.

Jim interface community has is the website

SP agrees that constitution is separate issue

Jim I have all I need

Bonnie are there other concerns?

Val - surprised to learn that you can detect which of news and announcements pages have content but it won't e moved - will be moved later?

Derek - will exist in old site so you could bring it over that way. Issue with those pages is they are very rarely used by most projects and communities.

Val  - is there a way to tell via code which pages are unchanged? This is how data gets lost.

Bonnie part of it is tradeoff

Jim one of the probs with those sections is they're stored in Tonic in diff ways due to poor design. It's a relatively small amount of content to script for.

Derek will look into possibility of notifying pages that have had recent changes.

[Val's probably correct correction: My understanding of what Derek said is that he will look into the
possibility of detecting which pages have content and seeing
if they can be auto-migrated and get back to us.]

JW access control will sort itself out quickly in each project and community anyway.

MO - related to constitution. Re. Poll some of the data from last election indicated that use of utility was a barrier so we're working on a request for improved UI on Poll

Jim we did have a concept for web UI for phase 3
...
Bonnie intent was not to totally replace the app. Anticipate integrating poll with AUTH and writing a web interface for it.

MO - JP has been largely driving that and is not here today, see business case in future agenda items re updates to new const with new preamble (JW working on) and exec summary to help people understand benefits of new const. SP has also worked on some of the issues related to the charter. JP will have more info.

MO - JW's issues addressed sufficiently?

JW - yes. Peter felt he never got a straight answer but you guys have clarified

MO will more proactively ask web team to join OGB meetings to answer questions in future

[Bonnie's team drops off.]

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Meeting continues

other biz item is Peter's work on not obviously active contributors [tabled because Peter not present]

suggestion box has gone quiet

future items - new UI for poll as just discussed. If no further discussion needed, MO will send them the business case (to increase voter turnout).

Val - also some grants had expired, then were renewed til end of election due to confusion...

JBeck - that alone is what stopped us passing the constitution because many people whose grants we thought had expired, but hadn't

Jw we can't have a situation where technicalities cause people not to be able to vote

MO time to start thinking about an election plan so as to account for a ll the little details, Steven Hahn still owns the utility so we have to have time to get requests to him

JW would be good to have a practice poll

JW are we going to attempt to update charter?

SP it's a matter for mutual agreement between OGB and Sun's rep

Val focus first on updating constitution but good goal also to update charter before election because people seemed to get stuck on it not being updated

SP - some people didn't like the process for updating, had problems with charter. We just have to make sure constitution doesn't make it seem there are changes needed to charter. If there are needed changes, we should make them,b ut at  last election it looked like make-work

JW first line of constitution said charter would be updated - too many things were left undone or appeared to be

SP the problem was not done or undone, but that changes came in after the fact.

MO important to get candidate (docs) out 3 months in advance so there's time to make changes

SP wanted a mid-year vote because people won't do anything til there's a deadline

JW beginning of October?

SP let's say we will have a constitution end of October

call for vote:

[Val could be derailed by external forces]

vote on deadline for final version of new constitution: Oct 31

passed unanimously

SP what do we need to do to hit this deadline?

MO read everything in the constitution page on Genunix, look at Peter's work

SP suggest start from last time's constitution, modify where OGB thinks essential

JW preamble should be more community, less technical

SP that's line item one in list of changes

SP proposed motion to: the OGB intends to propose to the electorate adoption of the constitution previously voted upon with essential issues addressed - top of agenda for next time

MO let's also have some on-list conversation about what we've discussed today so Peter has a sense of it. I will try to get plan out for dates we have discussed e.g. practice poll, deadline for final release candidate, other items for communication around election. Others want to take AIs?

SP proposes tool Co-Ment for community discussion of documents

JW can you do a simple doc so we can see how it works?

SP there is a sample doc 

MO AI for everyone to look at Co-Ment, though new wiki will also be available by then.

SP wikis typically not good for this purpose

Future items: project instantiation doc updates

MO been too buried

AI for MO to put up new draft