Michael: I appreciate your trying to be conciliatory here, that's definitely a
productive direction for discussion.
There is, however, still a sizeable difference of philosophy: in Al's proposal,
the executive board has power to replace a gatekeeper or TAB member at
any time. But the executive board answers to whom? Adding layers on top of
the TAB doesn't magically create accountability because the top of the chain
is still "topless" as Don puts it. It only alienates the technologists from any
decision-making power.
Of course, being a technologist, it's hard for me to make the point that it's bad
to alienate technologists. But I'll say it anyways: it's bad to alienate
technologists. User requirements defined the features of dotLRN. But don't
forget that technologists made it modular enough that others could develop
for it. Pure user requirements direction led to SloanSpace v1, which became
so entangled in nasty technology hacks that one could no longer install it from
scratch (the data-model didn't install). And if you can't install it, then it's not
very useful to the community anymore.
