Malte wrote:
My suggestion: Restrict the dotLRN governance body to the level demanded by potential clients. That is limit it to quality assurance and adherence to standards in the educational area (after all, dotLRN is focusing on education and as long as MIT does not want to launch dotWRK...) and using of the brand. And make sure we have something like it for OpenACS as a whole along with a technical board (which can be the gatekeeper structure we have at the moment). I mean, potential clients of OpenACS have the same concerns.
My impression is that the first part of your statement (i.e., that the governing body should focus on QA and standards in the educational area) is not far from the plan. If you add in leadership in the educational area and high technical standards for the dotLRN-specific code, I think you have the picture.
As to the second part of your statement, I do not think that MIT would ever presume to set up a governing body for OpenACS. That would have to come from the community itself.
Now, there's a related question that has been raised here at several points about where OpenACS ends and dotLRN begins. My understanding is that both the dotLRN leadership and the OpenACS leadership have agreed to push down all non-dotLRN-specific pieces of code into OpenACS and to let the OpenACS leadership own that code once it leaves the dotLRN codebase. There is an issue about which code counts as dotLRN-specific and which is general enough to belong in OpenACS. It is a technical issue, and I don't presume to know enough about it to even begin to discuss it. Who has been discussing it? And who is likely to make the recommendation that MIT will take regarding what the right choice is? AFAIK it's been Ben and Don, the two co-founders of the OpenACS community. Al chose them both as technical advisors and from what I can see he takes their advice very, very seriously. I'll let Al speak for himself on this, but I can't imagine that Ben and Don would not continue to play central roles in the governance. MIT has made every effort possible to make this work with the community.
As several people have pointed out, it didn't have to be that way. As the major sponsoring organization, MIT can basically call the shots on dotLRN governance. Al chose to invite public comment. And his willingness to let Ben and OF put a rival proposal out for comment is a clear sign of his respect for them.
For somebody who is in a position to call the shots, having a bake-off in the community like the one we're having now comes with huge risk. Why would he take that risk? There is only one logical answer to that question: Al wants all of you on-board. He doesn't need your buy-in to proceed, but he's smart enough to know that he needs your buy-in to succeed. He wants you at the table. I hope the community will recognize his tangible tokens of good faith and respond in-kind.
