It has been a week since the news about the new Governance BOINC came out. Time for some of the questions that keep people busy:
Programming: "In all cases, contributors are expected to work as part of the community." You and Rom have been adding code- and bug-fixes this past week. Are you exempt from having to discuss any of your code with the rest of the community, or is this only for newcomers or only for new feature code? Documentation: what of those users that have an editor account already, will their account continue to work as it was before? What of those with administrator power but not mentioned as a committer? Which changes are they allowed to make, is this with or without consent of the community/PMC? When do they have to ask the committers for help? Can any page be added without permission, or do I have to ask permission every time I want to add a page? Communication channels: "The project will provide communication channels for various purposes: PMC public email list..." So far, none has been provided. PMC: why was it decided to add a PMC? Why not have just one or two deciders? Who has decided who is in the initial group? Were they all asked, or were they appointed? Is there any transparency in how they were chosen? How about they introduce themselves on the (PMC) email list? When did they decide that David should become their chairman? Why isn't there already one or two people from the community included? Email lists: what's the boinc_admin googlegroup for and what does it add that the boinc_* email lists don't already have? Will the boinc_* email lists from Berkeley die out now? You ask that people email you on [email protected], but don't tell that they should go to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/boinc_admin to register as member of that group, as else they will not receive emails from that group, or answers to their question if someone chooses to only answer to boinc_admin* like what happened with the answer to Nicolás Alvarez. It isn't intuitive that these groups need registration to be able to follow the conversation on there. The News Is Not Out There: "BOINC is a community-based open-source project." But at the same time, the community that is supposed to make this project is not informed of their role. I have made a trawl through all of the projects on the http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php list, plus some added from bookmarks. In all I searched in about 45 project forums and found discussion about this new Governance BOINC in just three (!!) of them (Bitcoin Utopia, WCG and Seti). It's not even discussed in any of the project forums of the people named in the PMC, apart from WCG and Seti. And only in the thread on the latter has one person from the PMC answered once (Rom). All threads seem to have died out now. News like this should have been sent through the Notices to reach as many people from the community as possible. Also the timing of the news was a bit suspicious, posting it on the 3rd of July, right before all of America is away for pre-celebrations of the 4th of July and the start of vacation time in a lot of countries in the Northern Hemisphere. It's as if the news shouldn't have been out there, or that it needs downplaying on the importance of the change. The one line, two sentences 'News' bit on the BOINC front page didn't make it any clearer either. Even I didn't recognize it as 'THE ANNOUNCEMENT', which is why I asked you to post the news on the BOINC website. Apart from two follow-up mails from members of the community, this news has been met with total silence. Either it isn't received by anyone, no one understands what you meant, or no one cares. Or the importance of it is lost on everyone. I would've expected something more, or at least someone else with a lot of questions like I am now sending in. But since that time, it's been total silence in this thread. So perhaps a renewed explanation is needed, or a teleconference. Put a video about it on Youtube? Last, something that Rom said and has me thinking: "A new grant request has been submitted to the NSF based on feedback from various sources. We don't expect to hear anything back from NSF until early next year." .. does that mean that when you find new funding, that you turn off the community-based BOINC again, thank all members of the PMC and go back to how it was developed/produced before? I'll leave it there, for now. It's possible I come up with additional questions, but will wait first to see what, if anything, I get back on these. In the mean time, I'll link to the threads I mentioned in the three project forums, in case people want to read up on them. Bitcoin Utopia http://www.bitcoinutopia.net/bitcoinutopia/forum_thread.php?id=887 WCG http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,38168 Seti https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=77650 -- Jord van der Elst. On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 7:42 PM, David Anderson <[email protected]> wrote: > BOINC's funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation has ended, > at least for the time being. > This funding supported me, Rom Walton, and Charlie Fenton. > We're now working on other things, > although we'll stay involved in BOINC at some level. > > The BOINC project will continue, and will be run according to > a community-based model rather than centrally. > In essence, the people who contribute to BOINC now make the decisions about > it. > This model is summarized here: > http://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/ProjectGovernance > and described in detail here: > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C6pU5RqidYBxk9oyAevm1yH1tn4Hw27oM8YpvsnR-gg > > There will probably be little visible change. > The BOINC software will continue to work. > The translation system, Alpha testing project, BOINC web site, > message boards, and email lists will continue to operate. > However, any new development and major bug fixes to BOINC > will need to be done by volunteer programmers. > I'm confident that the BOINC community will meet the challenge. > > I welcome your feedback. > Please post it to [email protected], > a new email list for discussions about the BOINC project as a whole. > > -- David > _______________________________________________ > boinc_dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.ssl.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/boinc_dev > To unsubscribe, visit the above URL and > (near bottom of page) enter your email address. _______________________________________________ boinc_dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ssl.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/boinc_dev To unsubscribe, visit the above URL and (near bottom of page) enter your email address.
