Wow, this thread is so enormous and full of interesting ideas that I don't know where to start! I think this discussion has greatly helped me understand Als governance proposal. Eventhough the proposal is very well written it is still, by necessity, abstract and it is difficult to see the practical implications.
I personally have no fear or reluctance about MIT governing dotLRN, on the contrary, I feel that it is MITs continued involvement and backing of the project that gives it credibility and weight and ultimately what makes world-wide adoption viable. If MIT would pull out of the governance of dotLRN at this stage I feel that this would severel hurt my chances of selling the platform in Europe.
The idea of the executive board and the user advisory board makes perfect sense to me. There needs to be a forum where the needs of various user organizations (i.e. learning institutions) can be expressed and synergies can be found. The Technical Advisory Board helps monitoring the work of the gatekeepers. If it turns out that the gatekeepers are unresponsive or their direction is not inline with the strategy of the Executive Board then the board needs to have the power to take corrective action. Of course, in practice, the gatekeepers will not be reduced to mere implementors, but will surely have a dialog with the board about strategy.
Don's point about allowing room for non-technical people is excellent. I think that people like Michael Feldstein who are passionate and knowledgable about e-learning are a great value-add for the dotLRN project and we need more people like that. Ultimately the challenge will be to collect the feedback of the user community to find a good direction for the platform.
Carl touches on a key issue here which is to avoid diluted efforts, or a fork of dotLRN. It must be the mission of the Executive Board to avoid such a fork by finding the compromises that best express the needs of the various clients. Once again, this helps us understand why the board is important.
It is somewhat worrying that Don has to point out to the community that funding is a good thing and that OpenACS wouldn't even exist without the VC money that ArsDigita poured into creating it. dotLRN is a school book example of how a funded OpenACS project gives the whole platform a tremendous boost and benefits us all. I would go as far as saying that dotLRN is the most exciting and promising project to have entered the scene in the whole history of the ACS movement. I am utterly grateful and excited about it!
Al, thanks for realizing the importance of governance and for being so receptive to ideas in the community! I am very excited to see the new governance structure take shape and watch dotLRN evolve and be adopted world-wide with a firm guidance from you and MIT and the others in this community!
