[Koha] article about governance of OS projects

[MJ Ray]

Lori Bowen Ayre wrote:
> Dan Scott posted this link on the Evergreen mailing list and I thought it
> might be interesting reading for Koha folks as well.
> 
> http://webmink.com/essays/open-by-rule/
> 
> The author provides some suggestions on governance of OS projects.

The author's two most famous memberships are of OSI, which sort-of
forked from the well-governed SPI, failed in its primary aim and
became an unaccountable zombie for a while; and of Sun's workforce,
who were so good at embedding good governance that we now have to
choose from a family of MySQL children and from a family of OpenOffice
branches(!)

So I'm not surprised that I feel Simon Phipps's beliefs are incorrect,
especially around who should be in charge.  The rules are fine, but
appear to almost completely ignore key topics like finance and trade
which are often the most divisive.

We could learn far more from general good governance from civil
society and charities than from reinventing the wheel.  Software
development is not *that* unique.

If you're into books, I heartily recommend "Voluntary but not amateur"
(despite the dubious title) as a general background and a lot of the
recent "Simply ..."  guides from www.uk.coop like Simply
Governance... or online, some of them are linked from
http://www.uk.coop/tags/term/governance

Hope that helps,
-- 
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