The aim of this workspace is to foster collaborative development of some Governance documents that can be used to focus discussion at the SEPP Conference in June 2005. Until this page says otherwise, the comments are work in progress and do not represent the official views of any party. Can we try to keep comments on this page to comments on the summary and overall shape and use the "more..." link to debate the details of each section.
We are moving towards a successor organisation to the Sakai Project Core Partners and SEPP which has a working title of Sakai Software Foundation or SSF
Purposes of SSF
- To own the code and provide a neutral organisation to which code can be donated.
- To ensure ongoing access to the code
- To quality assure the 'Sakai' code
- To provide infrastructure resources for development of the project
more...
Relationship to Sakai Core partners and SEPP
- At the end of the grant funded project, Sakai Core partners will become 'institutional members' of SSF
- At the same time SEPP members will become 'institutional members' of SSF
- Sakai Board will become SSF Board with bylaws to be agreed
more...
Nature of the Organisation
- Current Proposal: a Foundation controlled by an elected Board from the membership with extensive delegated powers
Other possibilities:
- R&D Consortium of Universities
[more...]
Governance/Bylaws
- membership
- extent of powers delegated to Board
- extent of powers delegated to Officers
- mechanisms relating to election/appointment of Board
- mechanisms relating to election/appointment of Officers
more...
Management of the Organisation
- The Board
- controls finances
- sets strategic direction of core framework
- ensures provision of services (e.g. bugtrack, cvs)
- ensures QA processes
- supervises activities of 'official' projects
- Project committees (aka DG, WG)
- manage 'official' projects
- are composed of committers
Meritocracy
Individuals
This section is still proving a little difficult. At present I am thinking 'membership' is a status level for individuals at which decision making power can be obtained (votes in PMC, or even in Board). And there are 2 paths to 'membership' one 'technical/development' and one 'utility/fuctionality'.
The 'technical/developer' path would follow the Apache model:
user -> developer/contributer -> committer -> member
The 'utility/functionality' path would be:
user -> contibuter (e.g. QA time, usability work, pedagogy thinking) -> 'nominated project role holder' -> member
In this second path "nominated project role holder" is intended to be a role that is equivalent to committer for the technical path, where a project sees enough commitment and contribution to ask an individual to take up a formal role in a project (e.g. QA, usability). If the performance is good and the person 'fits' they can be nominated for membership.
Following the Apache model, the two 'types' of membership should nominate and elect new members from candidates of the same type (to avoid non-techies voting on techies), but in terms of recognition 'member' level is equivalent. It will therefore be important to think of appropriate names for these two groups.
Projects
The SSF will provide aome infrastructure support (similar to current discussion groups) for any community/project that is related to use of Sakai in Higher Education. The first level will be open to all and will function like a 'playground' facility with no guarantee of additional support or ongoing maintenance. The Board will designate 'official' projects and will ensure they integrate with the rest of Sakai code and will aim to ensure ongoing support and maintenance of the code through a Project Management Committee. The Incubator project will help communities transition from the 'playground' to 'official projects'
Finance
- Financing of SFF
- Paying for pre setup advice
[more...]
Lionel Tolan's Summary of December Conference sessions on Governance:
These were the New Orleans discussions. Actually, was quite impressed with the results even though I had little to do with them. I was just the facilitator and note taker. My job was too keep everybody else thinking and talking and that takes so much concentration that its hard to actually contribute to the content.
I'll copy PDF to the end of this then try summarize here. This will be a good exercise because it is so easy to get into backtracking that sometime one will think we taking 1 step forward for every 2 back. 
The outcome of the New Orleans Governance discussions were:
- keep the board light
- board members work to ensure that the mission and best interests of SAKAI are met (they do not represent special interests)
- DG's are part of the governance process in that the chair of each will sit on a SAKAI advisory panel
- the advisory panel will meet regularly with the board to provide direction on matters of common interest
- DG's with special interests can should bring matters, through their chair, to the advisory panel to see if there is common interest
- the chair of each DG can bring special interests to the board for decision if there is not common agreement at the advisory panel stage
- anybody who has a special interest can form a DG. if there is common interest then there is a vehicle to bring it forward. if not it will wither
- DG's will disappear as their usefulness declines and others will appear where there is interest or need.
My concern is about openness of the DG. They will be quite powerful in this governance model. I believe it is only paying members that should have this level of influence. On the other hand the DG's are also perform a key function in training, support, idea gestations, tool development... etc.
