Thanks for all the work you have been doing so far
Stefan, I'm not sure this will change much.
Michel
--- Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:
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Hi!
[ liste: Sorry für Englisch, aber ich schätze mal
die Mail kann jedeR
lesen.]
First of all: I wish you all a happy new year 2007
:-) .
Because this is of major importance for the whole
project I'd like to
post the following to the discussion lists.
Several years ago I assumed the maintainer role
for
Oekonux. However,
this was meant only for organizational issues then
and over time for
various reasons even for this I sometimes refused
a
clear maintainer
role. So far I never intended to assume a
maintainer
role for content
questions or the general direction of Oekonux.
On the other hand as some of you may have noticed
again and again
people see me as the Oekonux front man and
maintainer and even see
Oekonux as my project. In fact I founded the
project
in 1999 and I'm
still very much interested in it. And yes: In a
way
it is my baby and
there is no use in denying that I actually want to
have a major
influence on it. This is probably also the way
people perceive it and
that is why beyond the official "we-are-all-equal"
ideology they see
some hidden, personalized maintainership.
A few months ago a few people suggested that I
officially accept a
role as the clear Oekonux maintainer for all
issues
of the project
including content related issues. They argued that
such a step would
make things clearer in Oekonux because then the
perception of people
would match the official roles.
Because such a step is a major change in the
Oekonux
history I thought
long about this and I asked a few people in the
project what they
think about such a step. The result was that the
people I asked
responded positively or even welcomed it. Frankly
I
was astonished
that even from one person from whom I expected a
clear rejection there
were an ambivalent position instead.
One point made in the replies was that a clear,
personalized
maintainership would also match how things are in
most Free Software
projects. Indeed when I think about it I
understand
that the
"we-are-all-equal" ideology I held so far comes
from
my political
tradition where things like a clear personalized
maintainership are
simply taboos. Well, this tradition is probably
shared by a lot of
people in Oekonux. But I always thought that to be
able to think in
new ways we need to be able to be critical about
our
personal
traditions also. Today I think organizing Oekonux
with clear,
personalized maintainership would turn some
lessons
learned into
practice.
I also thought about the question whether I want
to
have that greater
responsibility which is connected to a general
maintainer role. In
fact a hard question with a couple of things to
consider. To make a
long story short: I want to have that greater
responsibility but
certainly need help in various ways.
Well, after lots of consideration and asking a few
Oekonux
participants for their opinion I think it makes
sense that I accept a
general maintainer role. For the foreseeable
future
I hereby promise
to do my very best as an Oekonux maintainer. It is
my hope that this
will be a useful move for the project. Of course
any
help, tipps and
suggestions are highly appreciated.
Now what does this mean for the overall
organizational structure of
the project - namely for [pox]? At present I see
no
reason to change
something as far as [pox] is concerned. IMHO [pox]
makes sense as a
roof for the whole Oekonux project where
volunteers
from all parts of
the project can contribute to organizational
questions. I see no
reason why this should become different.
Also I think the transparency I always tried to
maintain in Oekonux
needs to be kept. For this transparency [pox] also
is a useful tool.
As a central institution it can be used by those
interested in this
transparency but doesn't bother others which are
only interested in
the content discussion on the main lists.
Decision making processes on organizational issues
should continue to
happen on [pox]. This is to involve all interested
persons in such a
process in a clearly organized way. However, final
decisions are made
by me as the maintainer.
As far as content related maintainership is
concerned in the future
I'll outline the borders of Oekonux on the main
discussion lists where
necessary. I probably did this in the past but
from
now on this will
have a more binding character. I always thought
and
I still think that
openness is one of the core characteristics of
Oekonux and this will
be my guiding line here. However, openness needs
borders to not become
arbitrariness. Where I think that these borders
are
stressed too much
I'll ask people to move their threads to [chox]
which shall continue
to be the place where Oekonuxis put their content
which is off-topic
for the discussion lists.
Finally I'd like to ask for support for this step.
I
know a few people
will appreciate it. Personally I feel that this
change will replace
ideological concepts with really working ideas. I
also think that the
clarity the project gains by this step will make a
few things easier
again.
However, I also expect that some people will
refuse