[oi-dev] New Project Lead?

[Ian Johnson]

> While having a lead is important, I don't think it's as important in the

> day-to-day operation of the project. A project lead should really be
> only necessary when high-level either/or decisions are to be made. The
> rest of the time, I believe rough community consensus should work out
> just fine to steer the project.
> 
> So a much more pressing question that needs to be answered, IMO, is to
> establish some sort of direction in the individual components of OI and
> delegate responsibility. I think finding people for these smaller
> components will be much easier.
> 
> Anyway, just my quick thoughts on the matter...
> 
> Cheers,
> --
> Saso

I have been in and out of the OpenIndiana community this year and have just returned to OI full-time in recent weeks, so I'm not completely informed on how things have been going, but one of the major points I took away from Alasdair's comments was that we have a number of areas where one person is given control of a component, or falls into it de facto, and then everything bottlenecks with them if they don't keep up. Alasdair mentioned illumos-userland as being the "final straw," and it sounds like that is what is happening there (perhaps with some other OI/Illumos politics involved; I am still catching up on this). I have also heard tell that one person is shouldering the responsibility of building all of the prestable releases alone. Getting rid of these types of situations strikes me as being among the higher priorities. Perhaps there are some ways contributors could be more strongly encouraged to commit/publish their work and not sit on it on their
 personal machines?

I might be overlooking something, but much of the work people have done doesn't appear to be documented, nor is there an easily-accessible listing of who is responsible for which parts. The only way I have been able to get this kind of information is by digging through IRC logs, which is not very encouraging to someone who wants to get involved. Hearing things like the fact that someone has built the latest JDS and userland, but hasn't shared it, or even information about how to do it, is really discouraging. Having something front-and-center describing what needs to be done and who to contact about it rather than just a vague suggestion to read the mailing lists or IRC would probably lower the entry barrier for contributing.

On that note, I'd be grateful to have some of this explained to me. I've messed around with OI independently for some time, but haven't publicly asked about contributing yet. The drama surrounding Alasdair's resignation happened to coincide with me switching back to OI as my primary desktop platform after a six-month hiatus, and has brought to my attention how much help is needed. I'm not much of a developer, but I can build and test things. I'm particularly interested in details about the process of making an OI binary release from all the individual components and what the current sticking points are.

Thanks to all those who have gotten OpenIndiana this far.

Ian Johnson