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The role of a governing body for the OpenSPARC
community will be to ensure the integrity of its members, the website,
and the code posted on the site matches the our guiding principles.
OpenSPARC Community Advisory Board
We are delighted to announce the appointees to the OpenSPARC
community advistory board. The board will be comprised of five charter
members, two from Sun and three outside the company. The members are:
- Nathan Brookwood, Analyst, Insight64
- Professor Jose Renau, University of California, Santa Cruz
- Robert Ober, Fellow, CTO office, LSI Logic
- David Weaver, UltraSPARC Architect, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
- Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
The board will solicit input from the OpenSPARC community which it will
use to help shape the evolution of the initiative. The
community's initial charter is available.
Advisory Board
Our first step in identifying what and how this governing body might
evolve is to create an "Advisory Board" for the community. The goals of
this founding board will be to propose a general structure for future
governance, drive consensus within the community, and serve as a link
between Sun and non-Sun participants. As founders and original contributors to OpenSPARC, Sun
Microsystems will chair this initial Advisory Board, and will hold two
seats of a total of 5. It is our intent to appoint three additional
members from the OpenSPARC community and the open source community-at-large.
What the Advisory Board Is
Most Open Source communities operate under a set of goals and
principles. The role of an Advisory Board is to form a set of guidelines that
governs this vision -- and perhaps evolves it -- in a way that fairly
represents the community members. Some of the pieces of a governance system include:
- Establish policies and expectations around members' activities
- Set procedures that support members' interests
- how to decide if/when to split off a mailing list or forum
- help evolve the website and other communications
- act as a liaison between the community and Sun
- Set expectations of unsupported behaviors
- handle inappropriate flames and discussions
- Resolve any conflicts or concerns in the community
- Act as an OpenSparc "champion"
What a Board Member Can Expect
Governance systems for open source projects range from outlining a very
simple mission statement and process for grievances to quite intricate
systems that include charters, constitutions, and even a "Bill of
Rights." [see reference list, below]
As a Board Member, you would help decide what style of governance makes send for OpenSPARC.net,
and communicate this to the community, first for comments, then for
ratification.
The time you spend on this depends on the style of governance the group
agrees on, but initially we anticipate 2-4 discussion meetings from
September to December, with the goal of posting a "final" policy in
early 2007. We anticipate such a position would last at minimum 1
year,
but that would also be a decision made by the Board. The board will
have
its own mailing list for public discussions and will meet via
conference calls every three months (the frequency may change depending
on need). We anticipate the time commitment to be approximately 4 hours
a month. If the board wants
to change any of these items, it surely can. We want to keep the
process and the role of the board as light as possible, so
the board itself can define much of its own role. Once the Advisory
Board
has been finalized, they would drive them to create an operating
charter
for the community by early 2007.
The opportunity around the OpenSPARC project
The original contributions Sun has made to OpenSPARC.net represent a
small sampling of what the bigger ecosystem could become. As a board
member and champion of the open chip design vision, we invite you to
help pioneer this
bigger effort, and to continue to encourage innovative opportunities
for collaborative
hardware designs.
Sincerely, the OpenSPARC Team
OpenSPARC Governing Board Meetings
For Reference
Some links to other projects' governance statements:
OpenSolaris (robust)
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/cab/
Project JXTA
http://www.jxta.org/community/board/boardrules.html
http://www.jxta.org/govern.html
Apache
http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html
GNOME Foundation
http://foundation.gnome.org/elections/overview.html
Joomla Code of Conduct
http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/44/69/
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