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Questions & Answers

Last updated 2003-03-10

 

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  Community Council: Questions  

  1. What is the OpenOffice.org Community Council?
  2. How was this Community Council proposal developed?
  3. What will the Community Council do?
  4. Why is Sun supporting formation of the OpenOffice.org Community Council?
  5. Who can serve on the Community Council?
  6. How long do Community Council members serve?
  7. How does an OpenOffice.org community member get involved?
  8. How will the By-Laws be created?
  9. How will the Community Council change things?
  10. Can the Community Council accept code under licenses other than LGPL?
  11. Do I have to be on the Community Council in order to speak to the general public or the media about OpenOffice.org?
  12. Will Community Council members have to sign Confidential Disclosure Agreements (CDAs)?
  13. Will the Community Council use consensus voting?
  14. How will the call for nominations & voting occur?
  15. Will the Community Council make Project Leads obsolete?
  16. Who are the Project Leads?
  17. What is the current structure of OpenOffice.org?

  Community Council: Answers  

  1. What is the OpenOffice.org Community Council?

    The OpenOffice.org Community Council is an association of OpenOffice.org Community members chartered to provide guidance to the OpenOffice.org community in the areas of strategic planning and resource allocation, public and sponsor relations and arbitration of issues within the greater OpenOffice.org community. The Community Council was developed to enhance the effectiveness of communication within the OpenOffice.org community, including communication between Sun and the Community at large.

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  1. How was this Community Council proposal developed?

    The original proposal for a Community Council was made by Josh Berkus and others OpenOffice.org community members in response to a request by Sun. The draft proposal was reviewed by members of the OpenOffice.org team at Sun, including Stefan Taxhet, Joerg Heilig, Matthias Huetsch, Danese Cooper, members of the Sun Legal team, and prominent OpenOffice.org community members including Louis Suarez-Potts, Josh Berkus, Zaheda Bhorat, Martijn Dekkers, Gianluca Turconi, Gary Frederick, Kevin Hendricks, Michael Meeks, Pavel Janik & Ed Peterlin.

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  1. What will the Community Council do?

    The Community Council is designed to provide a focus and methodology for organizing recommendations from the OpenOffice.org Community at large. The Council will provide leadership for the OpenOffice.org Community at large and ensure that this Community's recommendations are considered in a timely manner by Sun. The Community Council will also provide a collaborative environment for effective discussions between Sun and the OpenOffice.org Community at large. Additionally, the Community Council will assume some of the routine maintenance of the Community, including creating new Projects and ending inactive ones. Finally, the Community Council will provide an arbitration forum for arbitration of issues between Project Leads and individual Community Members, as well as issues between individual Community Members. The intent of such arbitration is to maintain a positive focus, reduce friction and increase productivity within the larger OpenOffice.org Community.

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  1. Why is Sun supporting formation of the OpenOffice.org Community Council?

    Sun has long been committed to increasing the voice of the OpenOffice.org community at large in the daily business of running of OpenOffice.org. As with any large group of dedicated individuals it can be a daunting task to organize raw communication into clear guidance. Sun supports the effort to create a Community Council within the OpenOffice.org community to increase the communication between Sun and the Community at large.

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  1. Who can serve on the Community Council?

    The composition of the Community Council was carefully considered. There was a desire to ensure that those serving on the Council were fully committed to the long-term success and life of OpenOffice.org (as indicated by long-standing contribution to the project). In concert with the organizational structure of the OpenOffice.org project, five of the members will always be chosen from among the Project Leads of Accepted Projects hosted on OpenOffice.org. To represent the diversity within the OpenOffice.org Community, two of the Council members will be chosen from among the mature Native Language Projects hosted on OpenOffice.org. There will be one Community Contributor representing emerging trends, chosen either from the leadership of active Incubator projects or from among the most prominent members of the on-line User Community at OpenOffice.org. Lastly, one of the members will always be a Sun employee who can champion Council recommendations and requests back to Sun and communicate Sun's responses back to the Council.

    An Accepted Project is a project that has been included in the Accepted Projects category. Projects in the Accepted Project category are defined either by having their work agreed upon by the Project Leads and the Community to comprise the OpenOffice.org product, or to have demonstrated their merits and worth to the Community in some other fashion. The Marketing Project, for instance, is in the Accepted Projects category and was voted in by the Project Leads. The other two categories are Native-Language and Incubator Projects. Native-Language and Incubator Projects speak through their representatives, currently serving as the Project Leads. For a fuller explanation see the guidelines on proposing projects, see:
    http://www.openoffice.org/about_us/protocols_proposing.html

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  1. How long do Community Council members serve?

    Generally for twelve (12) months, although the elections are staggered so that at any given time only half of the Council members are newly elected.

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  1. How does an OpenOffice.org community member get involved?

    If you wish to serve on the Community Council, you must be elected by your community peers. The Project Leads vote on the five Project Lead seats, the Native Language Projects select their representatives and the Community Contributor will be elected by popular general community vote. Of course every member of the OpenOffice.org Community at large has the right to communicate ideas and preferences to the elected representatives.

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  1. How will the By-Laws be created?

    One of the first duties of the first Community Council will be to draft By-Laws which will be maintained publicly.

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  1. How will the Community Council change things?

    It is our intent that the Community Council will formalize and prioritize communication between Projects, as well as between Sun and the Community at large. The Community Council will also assume responsibility for aspects of policing the Community at large, including revoking Community membership. This action has not been necessary yet for OpenOffice.org, but some other large Free and Open Source projects have recently had to handle this difficult issue so we want to provide a fair community forum for such issues.

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  1. Can the Community Council accept code under licenses other than LGPL?

    No. The charter of the Community Council by design does not encourage destabilization of the project, but does encourage the Community to organize its recommendations and to present them as guidance. The Community Council specifically does NOT have the power to alter the licensing of OpenOffice.org.

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  1. Do I have to be on the Community Council in order to speak to the general public or the media about OpenOffice.org?

    OpenOffice.org enjoys a large and enthusiastic volunteer marketing organization which has been incredibly supportive in answering the demand for presentations and testimonials. This is a wonderful aspect of the OpenOffice.org Community and there is no wish to curtail it. Rather we hope the Community Council will help amplify this aspect by providing guidance about which opportunities merit additional focus and my providing means to collect donations and disperse funding to support these activities.

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  1. Will Community Council members have to sign Confidential Disclosure Agreements (CDAs)?

    Yes. Part of this Community Council Proposal is the concept of "confidential sessions" which would require that Council members sign a limited CDA. In order to be aware of important facts to assist in making good recommendations, the Community Council may from time to time be briefed on some confidential aspects of Sun's strategy with respect to StarOffice (or the confidential strategies of third parties who plan to make use of OpenOffice.org code). Such disclosures would need to remain confidential.

    CDAs are designed to allow the sharing of non-public information in a controlled way, so that the receiver of the information is alerted to its confidential nature and agrees not to make the information public. There was much discussion during the drafting of the OpenOffice.org Community Council Proposal on the subject of confidentiality. The specific language in the Proposal says:

    "This [confidential] session will be brief in duration, and specific in its content, and will be made public when the necessity for confidentiality has passed."

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  1. Will the Community Council use consensus voting?

    The five Project Leads and two Native Language Representatives will be selected by consensus of their peers. Once formed, the business of the Community Council will be conducted by consensus voting among all nine members of the Community Council. The intention is that the Community Council work harmoniously and positively and agree on its recommendations. Consensus voting is inherently more conservative than majority rule, and generally promotes stability and cooperation.

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  1. How will the call for nominations & voting occur?

    This Proposal is being circulated for comment by the OpenOffice.org Community at large. After the public comment period separate calls for nominations for the different seats will occur (projects leads representatives, native-language representatives and community contributor representative will be sent to the appropriate forums). At the end of the nomination period each group will elect it's representatives. The Community Contributor Representative candidates will be determined and then elected from among two or three candidates, by popular vote, by the general OpenOffice.org community using an online mechanism accessible to all Community Members.

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  1. Will the Community Council make Project Leads obsolete?

    Quite the contrary. Project Leads will continue to direct their projects and make final decisions on those projects, but will give due consideration to the recommendations of the Community Council. The Community Council's work is not that of the Project Leads.

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  1. Who are the Project Leads?

    Each project has a lead but the term, "Project Leads," refers to those Project Leads of the Accepted Projects. A list of the Project Leads can be found on the Projects page (http://projects.openoffice.org/index.html). The Project Leads of Native-Lang and Incubator are each Project Leads, but the leads of the individual projects making up the Native-Lang and Incubator projects are not.

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  1. What is the current structure of OpenOffice.org?

    OpenOffice.org was begun by Sun when it donated the code base which is the foundation of OpenOffice.org. Sun continues to support OpenOffice.org by funding both the project's hosting and much of OpenOffice.org's development work. Sun also helps in other ways such as lending resources for PR activities. In the last two years, the OpenOffice.org community has taken a leadership role in the day-to-day management of the project and in spearheading development. OpenOffice.org is by any measure a successful collaboration between Sun, Sun's employees and developer community, and the many people not employed by Sun who make up the OpenOffice.org community.

    Project Leads still do the bulk of the work of maintaining individual projects and setting policy for those projects. The Community Council will enhance communication between the Community, Sun and the Project Leads about such projects.

    The Protocols for Proposing Projects details the process for selection and change of Project Leads. Each of the three categories, Accepted, Incubator, Native-Lang, has its own characteristics, though all rely on engaging the community for evaluating any proposed project’s merits. To view the Protocols, please go to http://www.openoffice.org/about_us/protocols_proposing.html

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