Re: who are the members of the DotGNU steering commitee?

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Rhys Weatherley <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Sunday 24 October 2004 06:03 am, Peter \"Firefly\" Lund wrote:
> > The DotGNU web page mentions the DotGNU Steering Commitee in several
> > places but does not, as far as I can tell, say who the members are.
> 
> The Steering Commitee is pretty much inactive at this point.  Only
> Norbert Bellow

Actually my name is spelled "Bollow" (with two 'o') - writing it
with 'e' brings up unpleasant childhood memories.  (In German,
"Bello" is a dog's name, derived from the German word for barking.)

> and myself remain from among the original DotGNU founders.  Decisions  
> that affect DotGNU as a whole are now taken on the open mailing
> lists such as this one, or during the regular IRC meetings.
> 
> The only time that the Steering Commitee mailing list is used is
> when we have to communicate with the FSF about some sticky legal
> point or other.  And that is pretty rare.

Apart from this, there is one more function of the "Steering
Committee", namely that Richard Stallman has made a commitment
that when the DotGNU Steering Committee asks him to endorse a
new DotGNU component as an official GNU package, he will generally
approve the request.  In practice such matters will be discussed
publicly (on #dotgnu irc and the DotGNU developers mailing list) and
then I'll ask David Sugar (who is formally the chairman of the
"Steering Committee") for his perspective, Cc:'ing the Steering
Committee mailing list.  If all looks good, I'll then email
Richard Stallman.

Besides Rhys, David and me, the other members of the DotGNU Steering
Committee haven't been active in the Steering Committee (or anywhere
else in DotGNU) for a long time.  Back when Richard Stallman appointed
the Steering Committee, the appointments made sense, but that's a long
time ago.  This isn't a problem in practice because apart from the
above-mentioned aspects (discussion of sticky legal points and
endorsement of new "DotGNU development projects") the "Steering
Committee" doesn't actively "steer" the project nor otherwise cause
problems :)

If we ever need a more active Steering Committee (perhaps because of
conflicts within the project that need to be resolved somehow), we can
discuss what to do about that.  But for now, I'd say: "If it doesn't
cause problems, why bother about trying to fix it?"

> There is no secret cabal. :-)

Greetings, Norbert.

- -- 
Founder & Steering Committee member of DotGNU, see http://dotgnu.org/
Free Software Business Strategy Guide   --->  http://FreeStrategy.info
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59        Fax +41 1 972 20 69       http://norbert.ch
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