Re: On cooperative work [Was: Re: newbus' ivar's limitation..]

From: Kevin Oberman <kob6558_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 23:23:57 -0700
On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 9:30 PM, Doug Barton <dougb_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> On 8/1/2012 8:36 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
>> I think this proves the point everybody has been saying: you are being needlessly contrary and confrontational.
>
> Actually if you take a step back and look at what Arnaud is saying
> objectively, he's right. If anyone can attend the meeting by simply
> getting an invitation from a committer, the only purpose the invitation
> serves is to force the mere-mortal user to kiss someone's ring. That's
> precisely the kind of elitist crap that I've been railing against for so
> many years now.
>
> OTOH, currently the dev summits generally take place with limited
> resources, so it's not really possible to have "everyone" attend. And
> (TMK) the "invitation" process is really  more like a restaurant with a
> sign that says "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."
>
> But on the _other_ other hand, the problem of things being discussed
> and/or decisions being taken exclusively at the dev summits, especially
> BSDCAN, has gotten quite bad over the last several years. Even amongst
> committers, the community has become divided between the "haves" who can
> travel to the summit, and the "have nots" who can't. Note, I'm quite
> sure that this statement will be met with howls of protest, from the
> "haves," that this isn't the case. Even if they were sincere, it's
> incredibly easy for the people with the privileges to see their
> privileged state as "normal," and lose sight of how the world looks from
> the cheap seats.
>
> In spite of Kevin's concerns (and I don't know what working groups he's
> been attending) the IETF model is really a good one to examine here. The
> majority of the work gets done on the mailing lists, with working group
> meetings serving as an opportunity for group discussion, presentations,
> etc. The results of the meetings are then published to the mailing list
> in the form of minutes, and the final decisions are made in public, on
> the lists. Another incredibly important feature, the meetings are open
> to remote participation in the sense that slide decks are published in
> advance, the meeting audio is streamed live, and there are jabber rooms
> for remote participants to interact with the people in the meeting.
>
> I used to ask the PTB to provide *some* form of remote participation for
> even a fraction of the events at the dev summit. I don't bother asking
> anymore because year after year my requests were met with any of:
> indifference, hostility, shrugged shoulders (that's a hard problem that
> we can't solve), or embarrassment. Since if the right people around here
> want something to happen, it happens; I finally came to the conclusion
> that they didn't want remote participation to happen, so it won't.
> That's a shame.
>
> If the only large, open project you've ever participated in is FreeBSD,
> what gets done around here feels "normal" to you. But don't be so quick
> to dismiss the viewpoints of people who have experience in the wider world.
>
> Doug

Doug makes some good points. The lack of any opportunity for remote
participation in this day and age seems quite odd. Almost all
conferences of more that half a dozen people are available remotely,
at least for observers. Some are set up for full remote participation
including presentations, questions (via chat) and voting/polling. It
is surprising to me that something is not available for significant
FreeBSD meetings.

By the way, WGs that gave me major issues were SNMP and DNS. SNMP was
dissolved and the DNS group finally accomplished its job about two
years later than it should have by scheduling meetings, still open,
outside of IETF meetings and thanks to the stubborn determination of
Randy Bush.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
E-mail: kob6558_at_gmail.com
Received on Thu Aug 02 2012 - 04:23:59 UTC

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