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Sep 1, 2005 6:13 PM
by: alhopper
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OpenSolaris CAB charter
Posted:
Aug 30, 2005 5:47 AM
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OpenSolaris Charter
(2005/08/30 preliminary)
History of the OpenSolaris Project
In early 2004, Sun initiated the project to open source the Solaris
operating system. A multi-disciplinary team was formed to consider all
the aspects of the project: licensing, business model, governance,
co-development engineering requirements, source code analysis, source
code management, build tools, marketing, and community development. A
pilot program was formed in September of 2004 with 18 non-Sun
community members and would run for 9 months growing to 145 external
participants.
On January 25, 2005, Sun (1) opened the initial opensolaris.org web
site, (2) announced that OpenSolaris would be released under the CDDL
(Common Development and Distribution License), (3) released DTrace
under that license, and (4) announced the intention to form a
Community Advisory Board (CAB) of five members -- two Sun employees,
two OpenSolaris Pilot Program participants elected by the community,
and one open source community member (2+2+1). The five CAB members
were announced in March of 2005 and introduced publicly on Apr 4th.
OpenSolaris was launched on June 14th, 2005.
Suns intent is that the OpenSolaris Charter and Governance Model be
delegated to the CAB, developed and refined in public, and ratified by
the community.
Important OpenSolaris Project Definitions
What is the OpenSolaris project?
The OpenSolaris project is an open source project sponsored by Sun
Microsystems, Inc. which is initially based on the source code for the
Solaris Operating System. It is a nexus for a community development
effort where developers from Sun and elsewhere can collaborate on
developing and improving operating system technology. The OpenSolaris
source code will find a variety of uses, including being the basis for
future versions of the Solaris OS product, other operating system
projects, third-party products and distributions of interest to the
community.
Initially, the OpenSolaris project will provide the core kernel,
libraries and commands that are currently distributed with the Solaris
OS. Over time, additional parts of the Solaris OS will be made
available through the project.
What is the difference between the OpenSolaris project and the Solaris
Operating System?
The OpenSolaris project does not provide an end-user product or
complete distribution but rather an open source code base, as well as
build tools necessary for developing with the code and a
infrastructure for communicating and sharing related information. Any
support for the code will be provided by the community; Sun offers no
formal support for the OpenSolaris product in either source or binary
form.
The Solaris OS is Sun's operating system distribution and is branded,
maintained and supported as a Sun product. Future releases of the
Solaris operating system will be built from the OpenSolaris source
code, but will still be supported in the same manner as previous
versions of the Solaris OS. At any given time, there may be some
software in either the OpenSolaris project or the Solaris OS product
which is not present in the other. However the intent is to release,
over time, as much of the existing source code as possible through the
OpenSolaris project and for future development to take place in the
OpenSolaris community.
Introduction
Sun was convinced that the long term success of the OpenSolaris
Project would be affected by the level of community participation and
that the community would not be interested in the project if they felt
that it was an extension of Sun corporate and the governing body was
merely a puppet organization controlled by Sun. The community at
large must have a sense of ownership of the project, its decision
making apparatus and its overall goals and direction. They must
experience a freedom from the constraints of a corporate cubicle or
from technical management who don't understand or appreciate the
technicalities of the demanding work they perform or the code they
develop. They must also sense that they can influence the direction
of the project - especially the technical direction(s). And, most
importantly, that every community participant is treated honestly,
fairly and without preference, regardless of which corporation they
work for (if they even work for a corporation), or any other non
technical factor.
Fast forward to August 2005, two months after the launch of the
project, and the CAB finds itself in the interesting position of being
empowered as a decision making body - but without a charter which
defines its mandate, scope, authority or goals and objectives. This
appears more unusual when it's obvious that Sun, as the sponsor of
OpenSolaris, has (numerically) more OpenSolaris developers
participating in the project than any other entity or corporation and
that Sun developers outnumber the current contributing community
participants by a wide margin. Meanwhile the bulk of the current
technical resources used to host and fund the project are also being
sponsored by Sun.
Although this may appear unusual, it is an entirely workable and even
desirable situation as our community has been successfully
bootstrapped into existence and has been widely accepted within the
open source world with little vocal opposition. Having a CAB in place
since April of 2005, without an initial charter, is actually a very
good and healthy thing. Why? Because all the parties involved [1]
have had "soak" time within the project to experience working on the
project, to communicate openly with all the participants, to
understand the views of many of the community participants (many in
face to face meetings), regardless of who they work for, over a period
of several months - while the project is still in the incubation
phase. This has provided the CAB with the ability to state its
charter with the freedom that can come only from a "clean sheet of
paper" as a starting point and with the experience that only comes
from working within the project, in the "trenches".
So starting without any constraints is a very fortunate position for
the OpenSolaris project participants to find themselves in. What gets
written on that "clean sheet of paper" will ensure the projects
Charter will have credibility within the community because it
originates from the CAB and not from a corporate entity. In a sense,
the CAB represents the "Founding Fathers" and the charter (and
governing model) its "Constitution". Given this statement, it is
vitally important that the CABs charter be well conceived.
Mission statement
The OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB)[2] is the steward of the
OpenSolaris Project. The OGB manages and governs the OpenSolaris
Project and acts as the "Supreme Court", or court of last resort,
within the limitations listed in the section entitled "Legal Status",
in all matters OpenSolaris related. The OGB, via its published and
ratified Governance Model, governs the OpenSolaris Project and
promotes fair and equitable treatment of all OpenSolaris community
members and participants. The OGB promotes OpenSolaris at every
opportunity and provides resources and motivation to further the
continued development and expansion of the project, and to ensure that
it persists well into the future. The OGB can and will delegate
authority to the community wherever possible and encourages community
self-sufficiency and autonomy.
The OGB believes that OpenSolaris represents the finest currently
available Operating System and related software technology and is
tasked to ensure that it will retain its technological leadership
position and expand community participation based on its technical and
engineering merits.
The OGB appreciates and values competition in all forms from other
Projects and demonstrates and encourages open, fair and courteous
behavior towards the stewards and participants of competitive
projects. The OGB believes in, and encourages leadership by example.
See the section entitled "Core Values" for more details.
The OGB acts as the public spokesperson or representative for the
OpenSolaris Project. In doing so it carries the burden and
responsibly for honest, accurate and clear enunciation of the Projects
goals, status, open issues or any other statements which would be of
interest to the technical press and general public.
Legal Status
The OGB is not an independent legal entity and therefore must operate
within the constraints that apply to Sun Microsystems Inc., in some
areas. Sun is the lead Copyright holder for the OpenSolaris codebase
and any legal challenges or disputes would be resolved by Sun and its
appointed counsels and advisors. Ultimately, OpenSolaris legal issues
would be the responsibility of Sun's Board of Directors and company
officers. The OGB or this Charter do not preclude or impede the
possible transfer of the charter/codebase to a 3rd party, in the
future.
Charter Scope
The scope of the OGB charter is anything related to the OpenSolaris
Project. In this context, scope means that the OGB, or its delegates,
is involved with, advises, asserts ownership of and implements
anything related to the OpenSolaris Project. Central to the scope of
the project, is that decision making is performed transparently.
Currently out of scope at this time:
- Copyright ownership and legal issue resolution
- Anything related to Solaris, as in the Sun commercial product
- fiduciary accountability or responsibility for the Project
OpenSolaris Governing Board
The role of the CAB is to bootstrap the OpenSolaris Community into
existence and deliver a Charter and a Governance Model - while acting
as the initial stewards of the project.
After the Charter and the Governance Model have been reviewed and
ratified by the community, the CABs next immediate priority will be to
replace itself with the OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) which will
be elected by the OpenSolaris, voting eligible, community membership
as defined by the Governance Model. The preferred timing is to have
this completed before the end of 2005. If it has not been completed
by April 1st, 2006, a new CAB - not OGB - will be elected by the
community and Sun, using the existing CAB configuration (2+2+1) and
voting methodology. The charter is reviewed and revised annually.
Voting is a privilege earned by a community member via recognized
contribution to the OpenSolaris Project. The specifics of earning
this privilege will be defined by the Governance Model.
In order to bootstrap a voting membership into existence, the CAB
will, at its sole discretion, define the initial Voting Membership[3]
- so that election of the OGB can proceed. The initial voting
membership will then assume the duties of conferring the voting
privilege on other OpenSolaris contributors.
The OGB consists of seven (7) volunteer OpenSolaris members and will
have a budget. A quorum of 5 OGB members will be required to make
significant changes to the OpenSolaris Project, the OGB itself, the
Governance Model or the Charter. OGB candidates are OpenSolaris
members, in good standing, nominated by the OpenSolaris membership and
must accept the nomination to be considered. The voting process will
be the Single Transferable Vote (STV). Elections will be held once
per year, on the anniversary of the formation of the first OGB and all
the OGB will be considered for replacement at that time. A former OGB
member may be re-elected to serve, as there are no term limits.
There is no termination from the Board other than by resignation
within a term. Board members will not be assigned to specific
functions. If someone resigns from the board, or is otherwise unable
to complete their term, the next runner-up in the STV election will be
assigned to the board, assuming they are still available and willing.
The board may, at its discretion, decide to dissolve itself and force
a new election.
Single Transferable Vote
A fair mechanism for electing N seats is to use "Single Transferable
Vote", as described at:
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/votingsystems/stvi.htm
http://www.cix.co.uk/~rosenstiel/stvrules/index.htm
http://stv.sourceforge.net/
To summarize, each member has one vote but it is cast as an ordered
list of preferred candidates. A later preference is considered only
if an earlier preference has a surplus above the quota required for
election, or is excluded because of insufficient support. Under no
circumstances will a later preference count against an earlier
preference.
The effect of STV [4] is to balance representation across all
significant groups. Having people vote for all of the folks they
like, without ordering, does not have that effect -- at best it
creates a board consisting of well-known individuals rather than
representative of the community. STV is a more complicated method, but
it helps avoid a situation where some groups feel completely
non-represented by the board.
OGB Budget and Resources
The OGB recognizes that it is unlikely to have, among its elected (7)
members the broad range of skills and experience required to address
all technical and governmental challenges that are presented to it.
The OGB may, at its discretion, appoint or convene commissions or
panels of experts with the required talent to help resolve OpenSolaris
Project issues. These appointees will be formed from a pool of
willing/available volunteers, or in some cases, on a work for hire
basis.
The OGB will deliver an annual budget which will cover the following
anticipated expense categories:
- Quarterly face2face meetings by the OGB members
- Required Travel
- OpenSolaris Presentations and conference appearances
- Project hosting resources or equipment
- Marketing materials
- OpenSolaris Community Development (e.g, an Awards program)
- CAB correspondent, OpenSolaris Community Manager
- Website/Mailing List daily Ops
- documentation, user group coordination, website development
- Legal reviews
Core Values
The OpenSolaris Project will be associated with the following list of
principles and core values. It will:
- foster an open environment where discussion is welcome and opinions
respected.
- foster a community which acts independently and autonomously without
unnecessary "interference" by the OGB.
- provide resources, as required, for the successful operation and
advancement of the Project.
- provide project leadership by example.
- promote fair and equitable treatment of all OpenSolaris community
members and participants.
- not tolerate personal attacks.
- promote courteous and respectful behavior at all times
- promote technical leadership, excellence and innovation.
- give due recognition for contributions of all kinds.
- evolve in full view of the world.
- be inclusive. Proposals will be evaluated based on technical merit
and consistency with overarching design goals, constraints, and
requirements.
- be respectful and honest.
- promote quality and engineering excellence as top priorities.
- be independent. Decisions within the project are made independently
from those concerning corporations or other legal entities.
----
Notes:
[1] described broadly as Sun employees, Community members and the CAB
[2] the successor to the current CAB (see elsewhere for details)
[3] with significant input from Sun whose existing Solaris developers
will no doubt be eligible for voting privileges
[4] STV is how the board of the Apache Software Foundation is elected.
$Id: opensolaris.charter,v 1.10 2005/08/30 12:44:15 al Exp al $
Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. al@logical-approach.com
Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134
OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board (CAB) Member - Apr 2005
_______________________________________________
cab-discuss mailing list
cab-discuss at opensolaris dot org
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Posts:
1,914
From:
NZ
Registered:
6/16/05
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Re: OpenSolaris CAB charter
Posted:
Sep 1, 2005 5:04 PM
in response to: alhopper
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Hi,
So, one of Eric's blog entries pointed out something that was a little
sad to see for my liking...
On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 07:47 -0500, Al Hopper wrote:
> What is the OpenSolaris project?
>
> The OpenSolaris project is an open source project sponsored by Sun
> Microsystems, Inc. which is initially based on the source code for the
> Solaris Operating System. It is a nexus for a community development
> effort where developers from Sun and elsewhere can collaborate on
> developing and improving operating system technology. The OpenSolaris
> source code will find a variety of uses, including being the basis for
> future versions of the Solaris OS product, other operating system
> projects, third-party products and distributions of interest to the
> community.
The first sentence includes 'is an open source project sponsored by Sun
Microsystems, Inc'. Now, I'm a bit fan of Sun, and don't get me wrong,
I'm hugely grateful for what they've done. To me OpenSolaris is about
the code, it's about the people, it's about the community. So many of
those things are infinitely more important than whether it's a sponsored
project or not. I'd like -
'The OpenSolaris project is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc.'
to be the *last* sentence in that paragraph.
Glynn
_______________________________________________
cab-discuss mailing list
cab-discuss at opensolaris dot org
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Posts:
820
From:
Registered:
4/27/05
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Re: OpenSolaris CAB charter
Posted:
Sep 1, 2005 5:50 PM
in response to: gman
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On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Glynn Foster wrote:
> Hi,
>
> So, one of Eric's blog entries pointed out something that was a little
??
URL please?
> sad to see for my liking...
>
> On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 07:47 -0500, Al Hopper wrote:
> > What is the OpenSolaris project?
> >
> > The OpenSolaris project is an open source project sponsored by Sun
> > Microsystems, Inc. which is initially based on the source code for the
> > Solaris Operating System. It is a nexus for a community development
> > effort where developers from Sun and elsewhere can collaborate on
> > developing and improving operating system technology. The OpenSolaris
> > source code will find a variety of uses, including being the basis for
> > future versions of the Solaris OS product, other operating system
> > projects, third-party products and distributions of interest to the
> > community.
>
> The first sentence includes 'is an open source project sponsored by Sun
> Microsystems, Inc'. Now, I'm a bit fan of Sun, and don't get me wrong,
> I'm hugely grateful for what they've done. To me OpenSolaris is about
> the code, it's about the people, it's about the community. So many of
> those things are infinitely more important than whether it's a sponsored
> project or not. I'd like -
>
> 'The OpenSolaris project is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc.'
>
> to be the *last* sentence in that paragraph.
>
>
> Glynn
>
Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. al@logical-approach.com
Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134
OpenSolaris.Org Community Advisory Board (CAB) Member - Apr 2005
_______________________________________________
cab-discuss mailing list
cab-discuss at opensolaris dot org
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Posts:
1,914
From:
NZ
Registered:
6/16/05
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Re: OpenSolaris CAB charter
Posted:
Sep 1, 2005 5:54 PM
in response to: alhopper
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On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 19:50 -0500, Al Hopper wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Glynn Foster wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > So, one of Eric's blog entries pointed out something that was a little
>
> ??
> URL please?
It was nothing special, but it just jumped out to me -
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eric_boutilier?entry=opensolaris_charter_taking_shape
Glynn
_______________________________________________
cab-discuss mailing list
cab-discuss at opensolaris dot org
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Posts:
820
From:
Registered:
4/27/05
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Re: OpenSolaris CAB charter
Posted:
Sep 1, 2005 6:13 PM
in response to: alhopper
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On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, Al Hopper wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Glynn Foster wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > So, one of Eric's blog entries pointed out something that was a little
>
> ??
> URL please?
>
> > sad to see for my liking...
> >
> > On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 07:47 -0500, Al Hopper wrote:
> > > What is the OpenSolaris project?
> > >
> > > The OpenSolaris project is an open source project sponsored by Sun
> > > Microsystems, Inc. which is initially based on the source code for the
> > > Solaris Operating System. It is a nexus for a community development
> > > effort where developers from Sun and elsewhere can collaborate on
> > > developing and improving operating system technology. The OpenSolaris
> > > source code will find a variety of uses, including being the basis for
> > > future versions of the Solaris OS product, other operating system
> > > projects, third-party products and distributions of interest to the
> > > community.
> >
> > The first sentence includes 'is an open source project sponsored by Sun
> > Microsystems, Inc'. Now, I'm a bit fan of Sun, and don't get me wrong,
> > I'm hugely grateful for what they've done. To me OpenSolaris is about
> > the code, it's about the people, it's about the community. So many of
> > those things are infinitely more important than whether it's a sponsored
> > project or not. I'd like -
> >
> > 'The OpenSolaris project is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc.'
> >
> > to be the *last* sentence in that paragraph.
Hmmm. An interesting point that, I must admit, never even crossed my mind.
I'll let you into a little secret. That text is a cut/paste from the
'engineering' version of the document[1], known internally as the "two
questions" - with a couple of mods suggested by Stephen Harpster. The
other version of the two questions, with more of a commercial focus is at:
https://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/.
Can you post an alternative version please. I'm assuming that you want to
de-emphasize Sun as the project sponsor?
On a somewhat humorous note; if I'd spent the $s that Sun spent to birth
OpenSolaris, I'd want my company name featured prominently in the Charter!
:)
[1] Taken up by the development process group and edited by, the talented,
David Comay.
Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. al@logical-approach.com
Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134
OpenSolaris.Org Community Advisory Board (CAB) Member - Apr 2005
_______________________________________________
cab-discuss mailing list
cab-discuss at opensolaris dot org
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