Forum OpenACS Q&A: Identifying the Specific Problem(s)

I agree with you that I am missing the point, or at least
misunderstanding it. You are proposing a fairly bureaucratic solution
to a problem that isn't clear to me. How is the situation untenable?
What have you (or anyone else) been unable to accomplish because of
this "over-centralized" authority in the community? I'm not talking
about what hasn't been done, because certainly much work lies ahead of
us. Rather, I'm not seeing what you and others have actually been
*prevented* from doing. Having a new committee won't help you actually
get the job done if you don't have the resources (financial and
otherwise) to take action. Solving the "invisibility" problem won't
happen without serious OpenACS live sites, participation in
conferences, and partnerships with bigger open-source players. These
things require significant funds much more than they do central
committees.

Don and I immediately noticed the over-centralization of the OpenACS
community as soon as 3.2.2 was released, and we saw the move to 4.x as
a perfect way to decentralize the process. The core, much like the
Linux kernel, would remain somewhat tightly controlled, but would
probably need no more than 2-3 yearly upgrades. Then, packages would
be created completely independently of the central organization. Any
organization can create an OpenACS package or combine a few of them in
the same tarball to create a "solution." That organization can and
should take responsibility for marketing that solution. That
organization should have no obligations to the central OpenACS team
other than begin decent open-source citizens.

Take a look at the other successful open-source projects. Is there a
Linux marketing committee? Is there an Apache marketing committee?
Not as far as I can tell. The Linux and Apache companies do their own
marketing, and in fact they often pitch the open-source products they
support in very different ways. It is already difficult to agree on
one marketing message within a single company. Coordinating marketing
between 4 or 5 companies with different financial goals and
responsibilities is extremely ambitious, and possibly impossible to do
effectively or in a way that adjusts quickly enough to market changes.

As for the state of the community, our OpenACS bboard traffic keeps
increasing, our number of users is growing polynomially, and progress
on the port is booming thanks to as many as 15-20 hard-core
contributors. All efforts, including the MuseaTech socials, are to be
credited for these awesome results. I'm not sure where you see the
community being unstable or having growth issues.

In short, I don't understand the problem you're trying to solve. What
precise structure are you proposing, and what specific issues will
this structure address? I would like to hear more details about it,
given that you clearly consider the situation to be quite serious. I'm
also interested in hearing how you think a committee will give you and
all community members more power and flexibility than we currently
have in addressing the problems at hand.