Don, I don't think it's either accurate or fair to say things like
Jerry won't make his search project part of OpenACS unless he succeeds in grabbing partial control over the organization. In fact, it's rather vicious.
Personally I think that it's time for Jerry to start his own, independent project somewhere, someplace, dealing with some issue or some software package or another.
Wow. So if I don't fit your definition of a model OpenACS user, I should leave too?
I don't have either the time or the inclination to take full and entire responsibility for an OpenACS 4 subproject. Does that mean I shouldn't be able to contribute at all? Well... it's your project, and that means you get to make the rules. But maybe there is a better set of rules that is more accommodating. Purely from a utilitarian standpoint, there are probably vastly more people who can make occasional contributions than those who can be package champions, and it would be a shame to lose all that potential help. I think that's at least part of what Jerry wants -- not "grabbing control" over what you're doing, but estabilishing some sort of procedure for the things you DON'T want to do, e.g. cowboy handling.
As far as Jerry's "crimes" of writing search code and proposing a search committee, go, I think these are really separate issues and comingling the two only unnecessarily muddies the water.
Vis a vis the search code, it's clear from the bboard record that Jerry has been working on this for some time, and making his progress on it quite public. No, he didn't go through Don before starting the code, but give me a break, do I need permission from Don before trying a proof of concept too? This sounds like such an honest mistake that looking for sinister motives is ludicrous.
As for the infamous steering committee proposal, I'll just say that I don't like formal comittees, and I don't agree we should form one, but let's not run someone out of the community for raising the issue!
I'm not trying to fan the flames. I'd just like to see insults (veiled and otherwise) kept to a minimum. :/
