Re: [nbdt] Re: [nbboard] Re: NetBeans Governance [was: [n b d t] Conversations during JFokus]

Hi Ashwin,

I think the essential point is that the current model isn't being
followed at all.  As I explained in the message titled "Call for
NetBeans Governance Board Elections" earlier this week, NetBeans' own
Web site say elections for the current governance board should have
been held one year ago.  That didn't happen, and no reason for the
delay was given and no elections has since been scheduled.

Since only Oracle employees have the ability to update the governance
pages on the netbeans.org site, we're left to assume that they either
reflect Oracle's viewpoint or Oracle cares so little about them as to
leave them totally unmaintained.  I'll point out that the bottom of
each page also has the logo for various other Oracle open source
projects -- including the OpenSolaris project -- and I certainly hope
Oracle and the community can forge a more productive, more open
relationship then they did.

There is a widely-held perception that NetBeans is "Oracle's project"
whereas I view it as a community project in which Oracle is the
biggest participant.  The netbeans.org site [1] seems to agree with my
view: "as with any open source project, all decisions are made by the
community at large."

Although low-level technical discussions have generally continued to
take place in the open, the longer-term "vision" decisions about
NetBeans direction and marketing haven't involved the community at
all.  The perception that this is Oracle's project limits community
involvement.  Clearly Oracle has a strategic interest in NetBeans, but
lots of others do as well and it's very rare that those interests are
at odds with each other.  What we need to do is identify and eliminate
the barriers that keep people from getting more involved, not erect
new ones.

Finally, I think we'd all benefit from some improvements in certain
areas of the infrastructure and I'd expect a viable governance board
which includes community members could help pursue that.  For example,
there have been chronic issues with latency on the mailing lists --
messages often don't show up for several hours after they were sent,
then batches arrive all at once.  The forum-based interface to the
mailing lists doesn't show message context, so replies sent that way
often make no sense at all.  Furthermore, the search interface to the
mailing lists is slow, weak and hard to use.  And as I discovered in
the past few weeks, there are no longer any mirror sites for NetBeans.
 A connectivity problem kept me from downloading 7.0b2 from the normal
site (both at home and at work), but the move to a single source of
distribution impeded my ability to download and test the new release.
These are just a few areas that I think we could improve for the
benefit of everyone involved with NetBeans.

Best regards,

Tom Wheeler
NetBeans Community Member

[1] http://netbeans.org/community/releases/roadmap.html


On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:03 AM, Ashwin Rao <[email protected]> wrote:
> It may be best to clean slate this, and discuss first about what are some issues with
> the current model. Would be good to be able to get the community perspective on this.
>
> Regards,
> Ashwin.



-- 
Tom Wheeler
http://www.tomwheeler.com/