[Koha] Proposal to form Koha Technical Committee

[MJ Ray]

Magnus Enger wrote:
> On 9 November 2010 02:03, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> > Irma Birchall wrote:
> >> Below are notes that Bob and I compiled from a meeting at the KohaCon10
> >> hackfest in Wellington last Sunday.
> >
> > That was last Sunday, after myself and some others had left.  Even at
> > its peak, I think only 8 of 20+ development groups were present at the
> > hackfest.  Who was still present when this unannounced meeting
> > happened?  Did anyone comment on the inappropriate timing and minority
> > attendence?
> 
> It was my clear understanding that none of those present at this
> "meeting" in any way saw it as a formal meeting, [...]

Thanks, that's great to know, but doesn't answer either question.  Who
was present and did anyone comment on the timing and minority of
views?

There was a published schedule for the first day at the hackfest,
which could have shown this.  There was the final session at the main
conference which could have discussed this too.  These aren't topics
which only appeared during the hackfest: someone had discussed them
with me earlier and I'd outlined why I feel a technical committee
would be an unnecessary backwards step.  So I hope you can see why I
feel this may have been submarined until some of us more-community/
less-businessy types had left.

> > Is this a plan to overload us with bureaucracy and more meetings to
> > attend?
> 
> That was not what I heard. I think the main thing was to get more
> discussion/involvement around RFCs and long term decisions. And it was
> thought that one way to do this would be to have some kind of group of
> interested people looking into matters of interest, and then making
> their comments/recommendations available to the rest of the community
> before decisions are made.

That may be one way to do it, but have you ever tried to get a
committee recommendation overturned in a similar system?  It's hard.

If we want to generate more RFC discussions, then I think there are
simpler ways we should try first, before we disempower the release
managers and wider community in this way.  For example, we could start
talking about feature RFCs more than bloody bureaucracy.  I'd also
clarify the boundaries and ban cross-posting between koha lists, to
reduce the mail volumes.  And appeal for people to average at most two
or three list emails a day.

Is this an attempt by some developers to externalise the cost of
leading RFC discussions onto the wider community?  But developers have
the most to gain from an RFC they started being accepted...

What are the specific problems with long-term decisions?  I think one
thing that some developers are worried about is that a long-term
decision might not stick.  If so, then the way to make it stick is to
build consensus, not to appoint a ruling committee.  As you can see
from our lovely UK government and probably others, a change of
composition in the ruling committee can mean reversal of a "long-term"
decision if there wasn't consensus anyway.

> >> For further discussion and resolution at the Monthly IRC Meeting on 10
> >> November.
> >
> > Please don't.
> 
> Agreed. It would seem out of character for our community to decide
> anything of this magnitude so fast. ;-) But let's discuss it a bit
> tomorrow and then let the meeting decide the next step(s)?

Pfff!  As I pointed out, if we introduce a technical committee ruling
over the release manager during 3.4, we probably break Chris's release
date before work's hardly started.  Why compound the AAF proposal
arising from an unannounced meeting by holding a timetabling
discussion at short notice?

Hope that clarifies,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
Past Koha Release Manager (2.0), LMS programmer, statistician, webmaster.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha