[OSCOM] Wiki page Plan changed by pdm

The page Plan was changed by pdm at Thu 09 of Mar, 2006 [22:12]

You can view the page by following this link:
http://oscom.avantech.net/tiki-index.php?page=Plan

You can view a diff back to the previous version by following this link: 
http://oscom.avantech.net/tiki-pagehistory.php?page=Plan&compare=1&oldver=11&newver=12&diff_style=minsidediff


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- PLAN: OSCOM REVISED

- {maketoc}

((!!Purpose))




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((!!Purpose))

The purpose of this plan is to identify the projects and actions it needs to have the international organization for Open Source Content Management (OSCOM) gather momentum.

The proposed ideas should help to get a better understanding of the OSCOM goals and how they can be reached more efficiently and with more contributors.

This draft does not necessarily formulate the official view of the OSCOM board, it is rather a basis for discussion. The draft is far from being complete, any feedback is highly appreciated.

((!!Principles))

Open and transparent: All issues concerning this plan should be dealt with openly and in a transparent way.

Cooperation and participation: It is highly important that all involved persons act in a cooperative manner and that everyone can participate.

((!!Vision))
We want to establish OSCOM as the number one umbrella organization for all issues related to Open Source content management.

((!!Brainstorming))

Some brainstorming has been going on on the OSCOM general mailinglist. Most ideas have been included in this plan. The plan foresees that there will be one more round of brainstorming/discussion about the general content of this plan, as well as further brainstorming for each project of this plan.

((!!Organizing))

The detailed planning of projects will be done at a later point.

((!!Actions))

These are the next actions concerning this plan:

1. (3 weeks): discussion/brainstorming of this plan on OSCOM general mailinglist
- include as many as possible from the content management area

2. (1 week): summary of input, revision of plan
- done by Sandro Groganz + OSCOM board

3. (1 week): decision on acceptance of plan
- by 2/3 on OSCOM general mailinglist

4. (2 weeks): planning of projects
- priorities/schedule
- responsibilities
- next actions

((!!Projects List))
Please note that the term "projects" is being used in a wider sense and is not specifically aimed at software projects. We need dedicated persons for most projects, who volunteer to be in charge. Feel free to add yours below. If you need more space, just add a short description and add a link to a new wiki page


((!!!Organization: ))
Define Scope and Goals
To establish OSCOM as the number one umbrella organization for all issues related to Open Source content management, we need to broaden its scope.

OSCOM should not only be about CMS, but include any kind of Free Software and Open Source content management application. This includes, Wikis, Weblogs, etc.

The wider scope makes perfect sense, given that CMS integrate Wiki and Weblog functionality and vice versa.

Seen from that perspective, it is one of the tasks of OSCOM to continuously define what is Open Source content management and bring the players in this area together.

The main goal of OSCOM is to foster innovation in the Open Source content management segment by creating the potential for information transfer between all involved persons.

To formulate the main goal in a different way: What is the unique selling point of OSCOM? It is the potential of becoming the main information hub for knowledge transfer within interest groups of the FOSS CMS segment (e.g. software projects, consultants, solution providers, etc.).

In this segment, information is critical for success. In this respect, OSCOM can be of benefit in two ways:

1. Distribution of commoditized knowledge, which is information that has become standard knowledge in our segment. This could for example be a Wikipedia page explaining what is WebDAV?

2. Distribution of first-hand information, which is information only available to an exclusive group of persons. Typically, such information is exchanged face-to-face at conferences, during talks or in private talks.


((!!!Organizations: Define Involved Groups))


We'd like to involve the following groups in the Open Source content management segment:
- developers
- project managers
- consultants
- journalists
- vendors
- solution providers
- users/customers
- others? (feel free to add)

This is a list of projects which could be involved:
- MediaWiki
- TikiWiki
- WordPress
- FluxBlog
- Drupal
- Typo3
- Joomla!
- Magnolia
- Plone
- XOOPS
- XIMS
- Mambo?


- others? (feel free to add)


!!!Organization: Define Organizational Structure
In essence, we do not change the organizational structure, we just define roles more clearly as well as the processes of participation.

The Apache Foundation-like structure of OSCOM is ok, but has been anticipated as too exclusive up-to-now. What is needed is a rather loose interpretation of the existing organizational structure, to give it a more inclusive spin and to allow more groups and persons to be involved with a low barrier of entry.

We want to keep the OSCOM foundation as a legal entity, mainly for the purpose of financial administration. This includes that final decision-making concerning financial matters is bound to the rules defined in the bylaws.

The OSCOM foundation thus only forms the very basic legal realm for the OSCOM community. All non-financial decisions should be made within the community, based on defined processes. These processes ensure that the community is actually in power of decision-making and that decision-making is effective.

!!!Organization: Bylaws
Unfortunately, oscom.org is not accessible currently. Thus, I was not able to go through the bylaws and relate them to this plan.

I assume, that most things stay untouched by this plan. Nevertheless, if we see that certain things should be changed in the bylaws, we should do this now, because we have enough momentum to change things.

The major change I propose is that only the president and the board members are legal members of the OSCOM organization. The "normal" members, are not a legal subject of the OSCOM organization any more. This way, we strip down the organization to its core to have it deal with financial and legal matters only. (Following a suggestion by Paul Everitt)

We need someone in Switzerland, as OSCOM is there registered as a legal entity, who can fix issues for us.


!!!Organization: Define Roles of President, Board, Members, Community
The roles of the president, the board, and the members are in general laid out in the Bylaws, but we might need to redefine or clear them a bit.

The president of OSCOM is in charge of representing OSCOM. He clearly needs to distinguish between his role as the OSCOM president and any other affiliations. Whenever he acts within his role as the president, he needs to follow the principles of OSCOM and pursuit the organization's goals.

The board is only in charge of decision-making when it comes to financial issues. Other then that, the board members are part of the OSCOM members and community. I suggest that the board members should represent the groups of OSCOM, thus it should include one representative from each group (see above).

OSCOM members are persons who actively participate in or already contributed to an OSCOM project, be it maintaining the events list or organizing a conference, etc. The term "member" is ambiguous, because it could be understood as a member of the OSCOM community or a member of the OSCOM organization. We need to make clear that someone is only called a member if these two criteria meet:
- the person is currently or has been active in the past
- and the person is elected by other members as a member

The OSCOM community simply comprises all persons interested in OSCOM, actively or passively.


!!!Organization: Define Decision-Making
The basic formula is that we want bottom-up decision-making.

Existing members (which includes board members) can recommend new members.


!!!Organization: Elections of President, Board, Members
The president could be elected every year, just like the Debian project does for its project manager. The goal is to ensure that the most dedicated persons become the president of OSCOM.

The board should consist of representatives of the interest groups in the FOSS CMS segment. This means we need to define the interest groups and perform elections for each representative as well. There should be elections for each board member. A board member should be elected by the OSCOM community, i.e. active and passive persons. Elections could be every 2nd year and not overlap with elections of the president for more then 3 months. Anyone can run for the elections, you don't have to be a member.

Members can be nominated by other members and elected by 1/4 of the members as long as there are less then 40 members. Max. 1/5th of votes can be negative. With more then 40 members, it is sufficient to have min. 10 positive votes. Given there are more then 40 members, you can become a member with min. 10 positive and max. 2 negative vote.


!!!Organization: Generate new Members/Contributors
The goal of the proposed organizational structure of OSCOM is to provide an incentive for others to contribute to OSCOM. Thus, OSCOM invites everyone to participate and rewards active persons by becoming OSCOM members.

Especially in the current situation, we should actively seek for new members and invite representatives of related software projects, consultants, journalists, etc. to participate.


!!!Organizations: Affiliations
OSCOM could affiliate with other organizations and identify potential common interests and projects, e.g.:

- http://www.odfalliance.org/join.asp (idea by Michi Wechner)
- FSF
- Open Source Initiative
- Typo3 Organization
- Apache Foundation
- LinuxTag
- others? (feel free to add)


((!!!Information:))
 OSCOM Wiki Yeah!

Other information Channels/tools?
Make suggestions here




!!!Information: Definition of Terms
A kind of glossary on oscom.org, maintained in the Wiki. For example: What is an Enterprise Content Management System? What is WebDAV?

If there are already pages on Wikipedia, we could simply link there. We could also contribute to Wikipedia and just link from oscom.org.


!!!Information: Collection of Resources
A collection of links to online resources. For example related organizations, articles, news, etc.


!!!Information: Collection of Events
A collection of _all_ events in the content management segment, not only those organized by OSCOM.


!!!Information: Collection of Content Management Projects
A page for each content management software project with basic information. Quality of the project is not an issue here, we simply want all projects listed. The OSCOM Awards make the difference when it comes to quality.


!!!Information: Personal Page of OSCOM Members
Just like FSFE, each OSCOM member could have his personal area: http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows


!!!Information: CMS Matrix
We need to be more active in maintaining the CMS matrix - how to do that?


!!!Information: Planet OSCOM
Let's aggregate more feeds! Maybe add a contact form to the Planet page to provide new feeds.


((!!! Synergy and Collaboration)): Software Implementation
We need more thinking here, whether OSCOM should keep hosting and pushing collaborative software projects (like the WYSIWYG editors).

I would say yes, but not with highest priority. Once we really achieve such collaboration, this is a sign that there is a big need for it and previous information sharing has actually lead to working on a concrete result.

For the start, we should concentrate on knowledge transfer, which will hopefully foster collaboration in the software domain.

Please see ((SoftwareImplementationProjects|Software Implementation Projects))


!!!Collaboration: Software Specification
Maybe it would make sense to create a repository of basic specifications. For example, what should be included in a Weblog, a Wiki, a CMS, an Intranet, etc.? Not too detailed, but as a kind of quality assurance tool for project developers as well as customers/users.


!!!Collaboration: Student Projects
OSCOM could collect information for students who would like to do an internship at a community/company/organization dealing with FOSS content management. We could provide tips, or a list of potential organizations.

We could also collect information about ongoing student projects. They could be in the field of actual software implementation, as well as sales analysis, etc.


!!!Collaboration: Mailinglists
We keep the mailinglists we currently have. Let's see if we need some more in the future?

((!!!Events: Conferences, Roadshows))
Conferences are good for face-to-face conversations and first-hand knowledge transfer. OSCOM should support everyone in organzing related conferences. We could do this by sharing experiences in the Wiki about previous events.

Roadshows are similar to conferences, but they happen at several places and rather focus on product presentations.


!!!Events: OSCOM Awards
To foster the goals of OSCOM, we could issue OSCOM Awards once per year, where we reward persons or groups for certain achievements in the field of FOSS content management. The main award could be issued for the "Open Source Content Management Project of the Year". There could be other awards like "Open Source Content Management Event of the Year". 

!!!Summer of Code
Let's spend OSCOM's money by defining projects which would be good for the FOSCOM community at large