[Zope-dev] the Zope Framework project

[Martin Aspeli]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Lennart Regebro wrote:
> [snip]
>> Sure. But that doesn't mean a steering group is the right solution.
> 
> Why not? What do you think is the right solution?

I wonder what Lennart's solution would be too... Taking a page out of 
Plone's history:

> I can see a number of alternatives:
> 
> * a pope that has the leadership role. We had Jim, but the pope's 
> resting. We could institute a new pope. Who?

We had Alex leading UI and Alan leading the framework/architecture. Alex 
went semi-AWOL from time to time. Alan went fully AWOL years ago and is 
now focusing on running his company.

> * a small team of people, let's say 2 to 5 that takes on that leadership 
> role, sharing some of the burden and representing a slightly wider range 
> of interests. A steering group.

We recognised that there was a problem in trying to make sure we 
represented the interests of various stakeholders, and that we needed 
someone to think "big picture" in terms of what technologies we adopted 
and how we used them. We solved this with a rolling "framework team" 
responsible for soliciting improvements proposals, setting deadlines, 
and reviewing them for technical merit. The framework team recommends 
proposals to be merged to the release manager, who is nominated by the 
team, confirmed by the Plone Foundation Board, and paid a small stipend 
for his services. The release manager serves for exactly one major release.

> * a voting system. The current system of +1 or -1 from anybody who 
> bothers to reply isn't very effective in my experience; in any 
> controversial discussion the opinions are so mixed nothing tends to 
> happen, or alternatively people just avoid discussions and do things 
> without discussions. Solutions proposed that are harder to understand 
> might get ignored.

The framework team comes in odd numbers (either 5 or 7 members) and 
votes on all proposals for a given release. For each proposal, two 
people are mandates to conduct a thorough review, reporting back for the 
final pan-team vote.

I'm not sure Plone's model fits Zope perfectly, but certainly there are 
some lessons to be learned. We also have some of processes and 
documentation already in place, having made a few mistakes along the way.

Martin

-- 
Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who
want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book