Re: Another teleconference partial edited transcript

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, David Dawes wrote:

>>Another teleconference was held on 2003-4-3 to talk about X governance.
>>
>>	http://fontconfig.org/~keithp/teleconference/2003-04-03.html
>>
>>We held another teleconference today and resolved to publish minutes and 
>>the partial edited transcript tomorrow afternoon.  I'll post that URL
>>when they're ready (although I suspect many of you will be able to guess 
>>what that will be).
>
>Instead of holding these private conference calls and publishing
>"partial edited" transcripts, why don't back up the openness you
>espouse by holding these discussions in full unedited public view?

There seems to be a big misunderstanding here I think, but let 
me try to explain it as best I can.

The teleconference is typed out in realtime by someone while it
is going on.  Many omissions, typos, grammatical issues and
similar thus get in the written document.

After the conference is over, the transcriber (Carl as volunteer)
has been forwarding the draft of the conference to the people who
were on the conference in order to correct those typos/grammar
problems, partially missing sentences, and also to make sure each
statement is properly attributed, because not everyone knows
everyone else's voice perfectly, so there have been some
misattributions.  Also, the written word sometimes comes out 
differently than the spoken word, both in context and inflection, 
etc. so there have been a few rewordings of sentences to more 
accurately reflect what a particular person has meant when it 
doesn't quite come out that way on paper than it did in voice.

Also, there have been a few discussion sidetracks here and there 
that someone has wandered way off onto something unrelated to the 
discussion or similar which have been trimmed simply due to being 
irrelevant rather than to hide something from people.  I'm quite 
sure that nobody would object to making future transcripts as 
verbatim as possible as the conversations are quite open and 
there is definitely nothing private being discussed.

Hopefully that will clarify any possible confusion as to what
"partially edited" meant.

If you have any suggestions as to a better method we could use,
or perhaps one that you believe is more open, please suggest it
David (or anyone else) so it can be considered for future
conference calls.  We more or less ended up with the current
method as far as I know due to lack of better suggestions from
anyone, but we're certainly open to such suggestions.


>As for talking to the XFree86 board, I expect that it will make
>whatever statements it has to make publicly when it's ready, and
>not first to this private group of vested interests.

There's nothing really private about it, at least not to my
knowledge.  Everyone involved is either representing themselves
as an individual developer interested in and/or involved in X
development or related technologies, or as a member or project
leader of a given open source project.  There are even 2
XFree86.org core team members present on most or all of the calls
as well.

Everyone involved, to the best of my knowledge is acting as an
individual open source developer, and not representing any vested
interest or company, at least that has been my interpretation.  
I certainly am not representing anyone but myself.  Perhaps if
this is something considered important to make note of, we can
bring up the topic during the next call and find out specifically
if anyone is representing any potential vested interest, or if
their participation is as an individual open source developer.

If there's something private going on, I'm not aware of it, and
I'd definitely also like to know about it.

Most of us are basically hobbiests with a personal interest in X
development as volunteers in our spare time such as yourself and
other XFree86 core team members.  And likewise, many of us also
work on X development and/or related technologies as part of our
jobs at our respective employers too - again, very much like
yourself and many other XFree86 core team members.  Just as you
and other XFree86 core team members are able to separate their
own personal volunteer efforts from their job related vested
interests in X development, I believe everyone involved in the
conference calls is equally able to do so.

I believe many of us have a lot in common in this respect,
probably because the success of open source software is more
important to all of us as individuals than other potential
motives.  That is the case for myself anyway.

As I understand it, a number of individuals involved in open
source projects came forward interested in discussing things, and
a few XFree86 core team members and other open source projects
were invited as well after that.

In the spirit of openness, unless I'm mistaken you were also
invited to participate on the last few calls, as has the XFree86
board of directors however it's been unfortunate that none of you
have been able to attend yet for whatever reasons.  Hopefully
you'll be able to find the time to attend some of the future
calls as your input and feedback will be much appreciated.


>You've already heard what I think you should do.  My personal opinion
>has not changed.

Always glad to hear your opinions on things.  It's always good to
get feedback and much appreciated.

Thanks for your efforts David.


-- 
Mike A. Harris