Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: Bazaar for packages and ideas, pre-TIP discussion

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Posted by xx xx on
"OpenACS sites as central login point" was a near simultaneous posting with my previous posting.

Would that be a feature-driven problem that a bazar could solve?

How should it be handled? Is the dotwrk project a positive experience that we should learn from?

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Posted by Joel Aufrecht on
"Is the dotwrk project a positive experience that we should learn from?" Since the current status is listed as, "dotWRK has not been released as a package yet, and that is still some way off in the future," I think it would be very useful to learn from the dotWRK people what has and hasn't worked and what the key barriers to success have been. I think the problems in building a successful consortium are related but distinct from the bazaar issues. I propose these criteria for a successful open-source consortium:
  • Paying members receive more functionality than they would have gotten seperately.
  • Participants doing work for the consortium are rewarded equitably
  • The resulting work is useful to the community.
Some issues to think about: (how have other consortia addressed them?)
  • What timeframes are reasonable?
  • Where else should we look for possible funding participants?
  • What kind of formal but simple governance can we use to make sure the process is fair, without adding overhead that swamps the budget or kills the schedule?
  • Should we start with a specific proposal that solves one party's problems, and then generalize it for the other parties?
  • How do we break out of chicken-and-egg - a state where everybody is waiting for somebody else to take the lead?
  • Will we have a fatal free rider problem, where parties don't participate because they think they can wait for the consortium to finish, but because everybody rides, nobody funds the consortium and it doesn't happen?
From the external-authentication consortium in 2003, I offer these suggestions, and I'm sure other participants have more!
  • Some face-to-face meetings of all participants are essential to build a foundation for communication.
  • All parties must remain responsive throughout the schedule.
  • The amount of work that can be completed within the budget is always less than you hope.
  • Acceptance criteria must be established early and tested continuously. One way to do this is for the work team to provide working code/instructions regularly and users to responsible for testing it within the same day/week.