[news.eclipse.board.committer.reps] Re: The First 100 Days

[Ed Merks <merks@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Wassim,

I had to take some time to consult with my campaign manager/press release spokesperson (who shall remain nameless) before I could respond.  Oddly enough, he/she seems to think your way of stirring the pot is highly commendable, whereas I have my occasional doubts.


Wassim Melhem wrote:

First, I would like to congratulate all committer reps on their election to the board, and I am very pleased that, even before the term started, several communication channels have already been established to communicate with their constituents.

It was a very close election.  Almost too close too call, but given that the five candidates were actually running for five positions, not the expected four, there were no losers. Isn't that nice? Although the communication channels are now open, the constituents themselves have been glaringly quiet.  Does this mean that everyone is happy and there are no issues for the committer representatives to pursue?

I am a student of government (and by that I mean that I watch AC 360 and the Situation Room on CNN :), and I know that the first 100 days of an elected term tends to be the most exciting and productive.  It's all about debating fresh and new ideas with enough time left in the term to make them happen or push for them to happen.

Usually folks get elected for more than 365 days though, so it's good you're doing the review after only 20 days.

So I would like to take this opportunity to ask each committer representative the following questions in an effort to help us get a sense of the what to expect on the road ahead:

1. What is the single most important issue that they would like to push for and bring up for debate in their first 100 days of their term (ie. in the first face-to-face board meeting)?  Why do you feel it's so important?

Personally I feel the IP process is still taking far too long and I'd like to understand why that is and what can be done about it.  (Does the foundation need more staff?)  The new parallel IP process that last year's committer reps helped bring to fruition is a great when you can take advantage of it (which is only the case for incubating projects).  In order to ensure that I can take advantage of it, I've kept the EMFT project around as a permanently incubating satellite project for EMF.  Another related issue that I'm also bothered by is the fact that the IPZilla process is not transparent enough since IPZilla reports can only be viewed by committers; I've had to act as a mail router between the IPZilla and the external contributors (folks who are yet to become committers) forwarding questions and appending back the replies. I'm not a very good mail router (since I'm not nearly as organized as I should be), so that caused some additional delays that were purely my own fault.

There are apparently also some IP changes in the works, which resulted in much concern for the Modeling PMC with regard to Teneo.  You can look at this note chain to see the details:

http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/modeling-pmc/msg00305.html

I'll want to ensure that any changes don't adversely impact the established community.

2. If issue stated in question #1 was still unresolved at the end of the year, would you consider that to be a failed term?  More generally, how do we (and you) quantitate success of a term?

I'm not sure yet how much effect we can have.  For example, if the only solution to the IP problem is to hire more staff and there is no money for the foundation to hire that staff, have we failed in our goal as committer reps?  I suppose so, but who could really do better?

3. Now that you have had some orientation by the Eclipse Foundation as to what role you are able to play, are there items that you listed on your nomination vision statement that you think is out of the scope of your responsibilities?  Another way to ask the question would be:  is the position so far what you thought it was going to be or were you in for a surprise?

It's pretty much what I expected.  You might want to review my vision statement again before you read my additional comments:

http://www.eclipse.org/org/elections/candidate.php?year=2007&id=merks

I would really like to take forward the issues that committers feel are important, so I'm hoping that committers will speak out and let us know what issues are near and dear to their hearts.  Failing that, I'll mainly pursue the ones near and dear to my own. :-) Certainly the recent issue with Teneo's use of Hibernate and whether that will be disallowed in the future because of LGPL concerns is a case where I believe committer rights are very important to protect.  I want to see the community grow and be more inclusive and I'm very concerned if the opposite trend might occur instead.  It's a perfect example of needing the right balance of rules.

The EMF team and I continue to do our part to make Europa a success and of course there are many others doing the same. I also continue to answer many newsgroup questions, including platform and newcomer questions (or pretty much any question for which I might be able to contribute).  I believe the Modeling project overall is doing an excellent job helping to diversify the community; I don't have statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised if we are in fact the most diverse project  in terms of committers from a multitude of different organizations, excluding the Tools and Technology which are diverse by virtue of their catch-all nature).

3. Being a committer rep on the Board of Directors is a coveted position.  You get to add 'Director of Eclipse Foundation' to your LinkedIn profile, you get to add it to your EclipseCon biography and you get a chance to start every conversation by saying "Now that I am on the board of directors..." and annoy the heck out of your co-workers.  So in short, it must be a lot of fun :).

Yeah.  It's totally cool to be able to do that as necessary, although I don't normally make a point of foisting my status in the face of others; my e-mail footers do not contain such information and I don't intend to start now.  I just draw the line at being called Mr. Ed for obvious reasons; at that point I insist on Dr. Ed instead, which I've found some people will just shorten to Dred.

Yet for some reason, it's clear that not too many committers care about that.  The vote turnout is low and the nomination field was not very crowded.  Why do you think that is and do you plan to do anything about it?

I think that's because being a board member is a lot of work, it opens you up for public scrutiny and eventually perhaps even criticism, and as an individual it's not all that easy to accomplish all the things you want to accomplish as you stretch yourself thinner and thinner.  Also, committers tend to be developers, not managers, and developers tend to like to spend as much time as possible developing and hence will tend to avoid things that cut into that time.  But I've learned over the years that to a great extent, politics makes the world go around, and ignoring that leaves you at the whims of others.  Being right or having the best technology are not sufficient if you can't make a convincing case to influence the thoughts of others.

It would be best if we got individual answers from the reps instead of one collective answer on behalf of the rest.  After all, each rep has a seat on the board.

Big surprised that I answered first hey?

Thank you in advance,
Wassim