Michael - thanks for succinctly summarizing a process, you've laid it out better than I did.
Caroline - what do think about putting up a forum here? I see two "yes" votes from "stakeholders" above (I put Michael in that category), how do you feel?
Why don't we commit to a voice meeting at least once every two weeks, after which we can jointly write minutes to the Bboard, perhaps even starting a few different threads to keep discussions organized.
The short answer? Time. As you know, my OpenACS role is strictly voluntary and uncompensated. Unlike Philip, I don't have any $7M targets to sue so am stuck working for a living :)
So I can't really commit to the time. In fact, I shouldn't be spending time on any of this today, the Greenpeace schedule is extremely tight.
On the other hand, it doesn't have to be me. What we need is a conduit of information who understands both the community here and Sloan's internal needs and workings. I would put Michael Feldstein on the spot but if I do, I may not live to see the morning :) As dotLRN rolls out, usage grows, it learns to speak Postgres ... I think chances are excellent that someone will step forward to take on the role of trying to coordinate OpenACS releases and changes with dotLRN extension needs.
Of course even better will be the day when the toolkit core stabilizes to the point where dotLRN releases don't get tied to specific OpenACS 4 core releases. But I think we're a couple of toolkit releases from that point. Check out Lars Pind's post today on reorganizing the object system, over in the 4.x design forum, new post to an old thread. I think that will remove any doubt that there's a technical need to loosely couple our future schedules.
And if, as you say, you look at the survey package being at step one of Michael's process ... then perhaps we can take this package as an experiment in involving the community in the planning process? We' d all learn from it. I'm aware that open planning of this sort may not work for Sloan, i.e. be too unwieldy. I don't expect that to be the case but I'm not a starry-eyed idealist totally detached from reality. Let's try it and see what happens ...
