TWiki Governance Consolidated

We have as of August 31st, 2008 TWO proposals for the future Governance of TWiki. We need ONE proposal so we can again become ONE community.

This is KennethLavrsen's attempt to merge the two into one with clear identification. With refactoring after a discussion with CrawfordCurrie.

The things that Peter has not shown willingness to discuss.

Kenneth Lavrsen thinks that discussions on these topics so far has been leading nowhere and there is no point in continuing discussing them.

No organization survives long internal conflicts. Companies, political parties, open source projects - they all die if they get this thing wrong. We - the TWiki project - compete with the other projects - especially the closed source projects. Internally we discuss and we disagree but we always compromise and follow the leader(s).

Benevolent Dictator For Life is the founder Peter Thoeny

Peter founded the project and created the initial version of TWiki. The rest of us joined his project. As long as Peter is not willing to give up this position we all have to either learn to live with it or go somewhere else. There is no point in continuing to rant about this.

Problem for Peter is that he is in the same position as most Benevolent Dictators of open source projects. He is the BDFL of a project where most of the work is done by someone else than himself. If the BDFL ever abuses his power the rest of the community will fork. So this power is not worth as much as the word "dictator" implies.

However this limitation has to be clearly documented, so that project participants have no illusions about what the BDFL can do, and will never do.

TWiki Trademark

The TWiki trademark legally belongs to the author that invented the name and that is Peter Thoeny. This trade mark has a commercial value for Peter and he would be a complete idiot if he gave it away. There is no voting and decision making to be done here. This is a legal fact.

There is however a strong need from us in the community to have clear license from Peter that states that we community members are allowed fair use of the TWiki name and logo.

The things that are clearly open for community decision

Besides the BDFL and trademark anything else is open for discussion. At this moment there are two proposals. And once you really look at them we are not far apart.

The TWiki Community is administered by a team

There are two names proposed. Both proposals state that this group is elected in the community. There seems to be a general consensus that the is an elected team with a time limited period that administers the project. To avoid further debate this team will be referred to as the PFDC (Pink Fairies Dancing Club) until the community agrees a better name for it.

There seems to be a community recognition of the initial TCC. It is what comes after including how and when where there are different opinions.

The TWiki project has a number of teams with specific tasks

In both TWikiGovernanceProposal1 and TaskTeamGovernance a number of teams have been defined that have specific tasks. The original TWikiGovernanceProposal1 proposals did not define these teams in detail. The TaskTeamGovernance does. The debate that followed showed that the people that defined supported the TWikiGovernanceProposal1 proposal finds the these rules from TaskTeamGovernance to match the ideas of TWikiGovernanceProposal1.

• The PFDC reviews proposals for, identifying, and rubber-stamping the charters for task teams and ensures there are people on the team
• Each team will have a charter that defines what their role and rights and responsibilities are
• The charter is time limited
• The teams are renewed when the PFDC is renewed

The differences

The main differences between TWikiGovernanceProposal1 and TaskTeamGovernance are

• The BDFL is not mentioned in TaskTeamGovernance. However Crawford Currie has said "The title of BDFL is fine, as long as in practice the constraints on that role are well defined and documented".
• The TWikiGovernanceProposal1 divides the responsibility over two teams. A community team that has the community as responsibility. And a technical board that has the code as responsibility. Discussions following has made it unclear if the TTB can be overruled by the TCC.
• In other projects the technical board is responsible for setting project direction, but that role is not proposed in TWikiGovernanceProposal1 so the need for the team diminishes. Auditing and coder-herding should be a function of the wider community, not just of a select team.

The questions

• The BDFL seems to be a given which means the members must decide as individuals if you can accept this or not. However it is critical that Peter documents how he wants to use this role.
• Should the leading team be ONE team like in TaskTeamGovernance, or split in a TCC and TTB like in TWikiGovernanceProposal1?

Two interesting questions related to the leading team

• In TWikiGovernanceProposal1 can the TTB be overruled by TCC?
• In TaskTeamGovernance could one of the task teams be a technical board?

And this then leads to the final question

• Can the best of TWikiGovernanceProposal1 and TaskTeamGovernance be merged into a proposal where there is one leading team that appoints a technical board which is given a strong mandate?

Subjects for the Q3 2008 Summit

• Can we agree on a model with a TCC that appoints a TBB using the rules from TaskTeamGovernance?
• Can we agree on a model for how elections are done (who can vote and how)?
• Which task teams should the project have?
• Can we confirm that roadmap and feature proposals are still decided by the entire community and not by any limited team - but with a TCC responsible for the process of defining roadmap and feature proposal processing is running?

-- Contributors: KennethLavrsen - 31 Aug 2008

Discussion

I had a long call with Kenneth last night in which we agreed some principles:

• From a purely personal perspective, the title of BDFL is fine, as long as in practice the constraints on that role are clearly documented.
• The main difference between the two proposals is that the TWikiGovernanceProposal1 is top-down (driven by community leaders appointed to positions of power), whereas the TaskTeamGovernance is bottom up (driven by leaders from within the community proposing and executing on real work).
• The BoD? /TCC title is irrelevant. Both proposals call for an elected team who will administer the process. We agreed to given this team a working name of PFDC (Pink Fairies Dancing Club).

I have refactored the text to reflect this discussion.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 01 Sep 2008

TWiki Summit Position on License and BDFL

Community requirements for brandname License

• Free (as in free beer and free speech) Public License given to the entire community
• Noone has to sign any agreement
• License does not expire and cannot be revoked
• Commercial and not commercial
• License is global
• The community does not want to limit the commercial possibilities of TWiki.net
• We recognize that we cannot register a company or other legal entity with the name TWiki unless a special license is granted in a case by case basis

Community position on the Peter Thoeny's role

• We accept that Peter Thoeny represents TWiki
• Peter should have the same rights on the project as any other community member
• Peter Thoeny is considered the Chief Evangelist
• Peter Thoeny will not have veto right
• Peter Thoeny will not have the right to overthrow community decisions

-- TWikiCommunity - 04 Sep 2008

It was stated at the Summit by Tom Barton that the TWiki Trademark was transfered by Peter to TWIKI.NET. In fact, Tom went so far as to state that this trademark transfer was one of the important preconditions of his becoming involved in TWIKI.NET. (if someone has the recordings, it would be good to have the quote, rather than my paraphrasing.)

If this is so the TWiki.org community has little choice but to rename itself.

I would also presume it will become extremely important for that renamed entity to seek the legal support of open source project foundations such as SPI and FSF, as the communities moral right to expect the work it did would remain undeniably (and TWIKI.NET has already expended energy denying it) will need asserting.

-- SvenDowideit - 05 Sep 2008

posted by the Community from email sent to Martin Seibert.

Martin-

This email represents TWIKI.NET´s official position with respect to the governance questions we discussed today. As I mentioned during our meeting yesterday, my goal is to facilitate some kind of governance approach which is good enough for all parties concerned such that we move forward collectively and no one has an incentive to fork the project. I believe that I listened to the concerns of the community in good faith and brought those concerns back to my discussions with Peter Thoeny, Will Thomas, and others at TWIKI.NET. And I am also happy to report that we are bringing recommendations back to the community which I believe the community should accept (subject to minor tweaking, further discussion, legalese, etc.) because I believe that they successfully address the desires and concerns expressed by the community.

The spirit of this email is to communicate openly and practically. I do not have a hidden agenda, and if we agree as community contributors and business people on the substantive matters, I am sure we can hammer out the details accordingly. So this is not the final legalese, but it definitely represents our position on key issues and there is no intent to have any divergence between what we represent here and what we ultimately come to officially document.

1. Trademark questions

As I mentioned yesterday, we have a sincere goal that commercial companies thrive through leveraging, and supporting, the TWiki brand. If we do not increase the total amount of resource on the project we are collectively doomed to failure. And as Crawford Currie mentioned, the community in some sense is only looking for official comments on what has already been seemingly tacitly approved regarding commercial usage of the TWiki trademark.

Accordingly, we propose to create a legally binding policy or license, hopefully in as lightweight a fashion as possible (e.g., no signatures etc., as requested by the community), that:

a. allows active community members to freely use the TWiki brand for commercial and non-commercial purposes, under standard "fair use" kinds of principles. For example, it will be perfectly fine to create TWiki distributions, TWiki service offerings, etc., that use the name TWiki, subject to the key points outlined below from c to g.

b. the license will be perpetual, without royalty, not subject to revocation, etc.

What we ask in return is quite simple and reasonable:

c. fair attribution is required when the TWiki brand is used. Specifically, "TWiki® is a registered trademarks of TWiki founder Peter Thoeny, TWIKI.NET." The company name needs to link to http://www.twiki.net in online media. Peter has further clarifying remarks regarding trademark rights that he has assigned to TWIKI.NET (to address the discussion on that topic that came up yesterday).

d. as was already stipulated today, the TWiki community does not limit the commercial possibilities of TWIKI.NET

e. as was also already stipulated today, the community recognizes that it cannot register a company or other legal entity with the partial, complete, or embedded name of TWiki unless a special license is granted on a case by case basis.

f. regarding download mechanisms/marketing on the .org page, there should be two boxes of equal size, one for TWiki.org download links, one for TWIKI.NET links, next to each other. All other current non-open source distributions should be moved to the existing OtherTWikiDistributions page. We recognize that this point has not been discussed yet and are willing to engage in dialog on this topic.

g. we are troubled by current inconsistencies in how the community views branding guidelines, and while we stand by our decision to allow royalty-free use of the trademark for commercial and non-commercial purposes, we propose that some branding questions (those not covered by the terms above) be determined upon based on the overall governance mechanism that we ultimately agree on. As a specific example, we do not believe that current Wikiring branding actions on plug-ins have been adequately discussed or confirmed by the community.

2. BDFL question.

It is not Peter´s intent to stand in the way of community progress. And we share the viewpoint that the community should be fundamentally democratically driven as opposed to any kind of actual dictatorship (whether by Peter or by anyone else). Accordingly Peter has graciously agreed to drop the concept of the BDFL. We also further propose or agree that Peter Thoeny has no special veto rights, or ability to overthrow community decisions. However we ask the following in return (most of which was discussed today and should be acceptable to the community):

a. The community recognizes Peter Thoeny as project founder, representing TWiki.

b. Peter Thoeny is considered the Chief Evangelist.

c. Peter Thoeny has a permanent seat in the TWiki Community Council (or other primary governing body that we may ultimately agree on)

On this last matter, a point was raised today that if we create an odd number of steering committee/PFDC/TCC etc., and if Peter drags his feet on an issue, that it could lead to a deadlock situation. To avoid this as a problem, we recommend the following:

d. no special status (other than permanency) for Peter, when it comes to voting on an issue

e. when an issue is put to a vote, if the members of the governing committee are present in person, telephonically, or electronically e.g., IRC, they must vote (no abstention)

f. if any member of the governing committee (Peter or anyone else) is not present, they must vote electronically within 72 hours or they lose voting rights on the matter

g. perhaps most importantly, if there is a tie or deadlock situation due to an absence, that we name a Community Lead (per the Ubuntu model), who casts the additional tie-breaking vote. We recommend that Kenneth Lavrsen act as the Community Lead for now, until such time as we agree upon new governance principles and he is either affirmed or replaced as the Community Lead.

To summarize, I fundamentally believe that what we are proposing is consistent with what the community has asked for, and is fair to all parties involved, including TWIKI.NET, and that there is therefore no reason for any party to consider a fork. I also ask you to recognize that these are significant concessions or movement from what Peter/TWIKI.NET originally proposed regarding governance. I hope that we can collectively agree to move forward on this basis and work out the details.

I will be in the air for most of tomorrow´s session, and so either Peter or Will (and hopefully both) would like to attend tomorrow´s conference post 5:00 AM California time to push the discussions forward.

Thanks,
Tom

-- TomBarton - 05 Sep 2008

I need the trademark and logo to be GPL free, as defined by debian and others (and so 1a needs to be unrestricted by geo, time, or activity) - see http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html

This is the sort of thing that would make TWiki finally a true open source project.

basically, I signed up 8-9 years ago to work on an open source project - not a sort of open source project.

-- SvenDowideit - 05 Sep 2008

Summit Follow up on email from TWIKI.NET

Dear Tom and Peter,

The community wishes to thank you both very much for your positive and quick response to the issues discussed yesterday. It has been a great relief to everyone to receive such a constructive communication and we believe this opens the door to move forward.

With the exception of a few minor notes, we believe that the points we outlined yesterday have been met. We acknowledge that your email addresses more than the points raised however we will not address these additional details now. Instead we wish to convey our thanks and our agreement (with notes below) to you both for meeting us on the following :

LICENSE :

• Free (as in free beer and free speech) Public License given to the entire community
• No-one has to sign any agreement
• License does not expire and cannot be revoked
• Commercial and not commercial
• License is global
• The community does not want to limit the commercial possibilities of TWiki.net
• We recognize that we cannot register a company or other legal entity with the name TWiki unless a special license is granted in a case by case basis

PETERS ROLE

• We accept that Peter Thoeny represents TWiki
• Peter should have the same rights on the project as any other community member
• Peter Thoeny is considered the Chief Evangelist
• Peter Thoeny will not have veto right
• Peter Thoeny will not have the right to overthrow community decisions

The notes we have made to the above are addressed at the License. A very important point has not yet been addressed fully. While you are granting a public license in 1a, it is restricted in sections 1c - 1g. These restrictions have some effects we wish to avoid, for example, these conditions will not permit a Debian package to be created. The conditions in 1c - 1g regarding license use have been discussed already in the community but we acknowledge it needs further discussion with TWiki.net directly. However, as it stands currently we cannot agree to this but we believe this is as much of a concern for TWiki.net as it is for the community so we would like to work with you to resolve this issue positively.

Additionally we wanted to note that the license for use of the trademark should be a global (international) license. This we are also sure you will be in agreement with.

Again it is with good faith and thanks that we respond to your very constructive email. We will not at this point discuss your additional points, instead we are today appointing a team to speak with TWiki.net on behalf of the community.

In additional discussions we would like some clarity on who the community is partnering with. For example, if TWiki.net now holds the Trademark it would be preferable to discuss these issues directly with the CEO of TWiki.net. So if you could please clarify who we should correspond with on these and other issues we would be very grateful.

Many thanks once again. We will be in touch soon with information on who will be representing the TWiki Community for resolving subsequent issues. We look forward to a positive and bright partnership with TWiki.net

Kind regards

-- TWikiCommunity - 07 Sep 2008

I would like to thank everybody for the professionalism shown at the summit.

As we all realized it is time for a change. People who know me for a long time have seen that I have always done what I think is in the best interest of the TWiki project that includes the community, user base, consultants, TWiki ecosystem at large, and lately TWIKI.NET. I will continue to do so.

I have done what I see is in the best interest of the TWiki project also with TWIKI.NET. I invite everybody to re-read the "Personal Statement by Peter Thoeny - 22 Jul 2007" section of TWikiDotNet to see if I have been working consistently towards this goal. However I failed to gain the support from some key community members. After the negotiations at the dev summit I think we finally get to an agreement that allows us to pull on the same string.

I think everybody agrees with this statement: We simply have to pull on the same string, or we will lose ground to the competition, commercial or not.

The community showed a strong wish for a fully democratic process. We have a well defined TWikiMission and an ExtendedTWikiRoadMap that is in line with the mission. Therefore I feel good about switching to democracy at this time.

On the trademark question, it has always been my goal to protect the trademark for the community. That is the reason why at the time of founding TWIKI.NET I negotiated to retain the trademark ownership. Do a trademark search on the uspto.gov website and you will see. Technically I own the TWiki trademark, but with all economic benefit from the use of the trademark assigned over to TWIKI.NET. As a silly example, if I sell a TWiki T-shirt and make a profit of $5.00 I am required to give the gain to the company (this does not apply to other community members.)

May be not everybody realizes the amount of concessions TWIKI.NET and I personally do in order to bring the community together:

• Active community members may freely use the TWiki brand for commercial and non-commercial purposes, with a license that is perpetual, without royalty, not subject to revocation, etc.
• Peter retracting from the BDFL role.
• Peter retracting from the veto right.
• Peter promising not to overthrow community decisions.
• Peter taking new title as TWiki founder and Chief Evangelist.

In return we ask the community for the following:

• Promise to fairly attribute the trademark as indicated above by Tom.
• Community does not limit the commercial possibilities of TWIKI.NET.
• Community recognizes that it cannot register a company or other legal entity with TWiki in the name of the entity unless a special license is granted on a case by case basis.
• Equal size download boxes for open source TWiki download and TWIKI.NET download as indicated above by Tom.
• Peter gets a permanent seat in the new council (once formed)

So far I spent 30-40 hours a week on the open source TWiki. As an example, the TWikiOrgStatistics shows that I am consistently the most active contributor on twiki.org (those stats do not include the Bugs web). Since we are moving towards democratization I will reduce my twiki.org time to allow other community members to step in. This includes Codev web facilitator, security team member, TWiki.org web master, website facilitator, Plugins web facilitator and tech writer. In the past I asked several times to get help in the website facilitator role. I got advise on how to automate this, but not much help (with the exception of SeanCMorgan in the Support web (thank you very much Sean!)). I think TLC is much more needed than automation. I will continue the user account maintenance, but would appreciate help in the Plugins web, Support web, Codev web, and especially in the TWiki web. IMHO, getting real help (not advise) on the facilitator role is a sign that the move towards democratization is sincere.

To improve the quality of the TWiki documentation we need to continue to allow non-developers to work on documentation. I have been the sync master making sure doc fixes in the TWiki web make it back into SVN. You have seen my SVN activity yesterday on a few topics. There is however a backlog, more needs to be done. (As a side-note I find it counter productive to show the "PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS TOPIC" in the plugin doc pages, it scares away doc contributions by casual contributors. Better to allow edits to the topics in the Plugins web, with someone tasked to sync it back to SVN.)

Last but not least, going forward I would think that the community can work together with less friction if communication is done openly and transparently. IMHO we have ways to improve on that front. For example, is there still a need for the ##twiki.devs IRC channel?

I trust that the Interim Executive Board elected in the dev summit and documented in the TWikiGovernanceStructure will do the right thing for the community, user base, consultants and TWIKI.NET. Many things need to be defined and refined.

-- PeterThoeny - 07 Sep 2008

Peter, two points of what you and Tom are "asking" are, to all effect, leveraging the TWiki project to give TWiki.NET a boost over any existing or future competition:

• "Promise to fairly attribute the trademark as indicated above by Tom" I totally agree that each use of the TWiki trademark should have a mention to the trademark holder (it is the legal thing to do). But the trademark holder is Peter Thoeny as an individual, and should be attributed as such.
• "Equally sized download box on the download page". Why? Specially as the TWiki.NET version is older than the current release in the download page.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 08 Sep 2008

With regards to "Equally sized download box on the download page": I'm all in favor of a banner for recognition of sponsorship from TWikiDotNet. A download box with a different version is too confusing.

-- CarloSchulz - 08 Sep 2008

As pointed out elsewhere, If the TWiki project lists any commercial distribution in the same way as its distro, then it is implying

1. that it endorses that distro
2. it does not have confidence in its distro
3. that the oss distro is 'crippled' in some way
4. that twiki.org is a 'commercial oss project' not a real oss project.

No longer limit the commercial possibilities of TWIKI.NET. is a pretty loaded assertion that implies that the community is somehow limiting TWIKI.NET. I don't agree, but I guess its up to TWIKI.NET to point out specific issues they would like to have resolved, rather than implying things.

I'll leave it up to others wrt the permanent seat - I was pretty sure Peter agreed to a community vote on that issue.

-- SvenDowideit - 08 Sep 2008

• I don't know if anyone signs into the ##twiki.devs channel any more. But anyone can create a channel any time if they want unlogged discussions. It's not something the community could ever, or would ever, try to ban.
• I provided a number of scripts to automate the synch task (synch TWiki doc to SVN and vice-versa). I haven't looked at them for ages, and IIRC they required some manual work before the topics could all be synched that way, but IMHO that's the way to go. I agree about the "PLEASE DO NOT EDIT" tags in the plugins topics, but until there is automation, I for one am going to continue with the current process.
• Peter, if you are going to reduce your time on these activities, could you please let the community know what need doing, and when? While we often see the effects of your processes when topics change, we don't actually know what processes you follow, which makes it hard to support you.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 08 Sep 2008

Sven: I changed the wording from "no longer" to "not". We could spend hours on negative energy. Better to look forward.

Crawford: It's all documented, please read TWikiOrgWebsiteFacilitatorRole. Thanks Peter, I missed that when I was searching. I'll comment further there.

-- PeterThoeny - 08 Sep 2008

I think our current download-page-policy is just fine and does not need to be changed. We already discussed that. I am not sure if negotiating things like that in the middle of the process to restructure TWiki is a good idea. Same holds for your demand to have a permanent seat on a yet to be defined council. Appart from that, it would be a bad move to dilute democracy by hardcoding any special rights into the forthcoming bylaws, no matter how hard you have been working, Peter. We all do our best to bring forth TWiki. Let's keep the board legitimized by voting on a regular general assembly.

-- MichaelDaum - 08 Sep 2008

On download page my view is - something for something.

I am against two parallel equal download links for two reasons.

• I do not want a download link to for example 4.2.2 to be side by side with a link to TWiki.net's download which is normally behind in revision. This is misleading.
• I do not want any misleading information that confuses what is the OSS and what is TWiki.net. This can not be the interest of TWiki.net either. Customers knows when you try to trick them and creates a negative "vibration" that harms both TWiki.org and TWiki.net

What I support and suggest is "something for something".

I am personally very thankful to TWiki.net for making the contact to Sun that made the donation of expensive server equipment possible. I am thankful to the many hours that has been spent and will be spent in future with maintaining the physical and low level (OS) system setup and maintenance. And I am thankful for them paying the bill for the bandwidth. What we can offer TWiki.net is:

• As long as TWiki.net continues to maintain our servers and pay for the bandwidth, TWiki.net should be granted a banner add size 468 x 60 pixels (standard full banner) on the download page. The banner can contain whatever TWiki.net wishes and content can be changed at will, but it must be clear froms its position and a guide text above or below the banner that it is an add. The community decides on guide text (example can be a simple "sponsered link").

This also implies that someone else could later take over the sponsorship of our servers which would mean that this someone would then get the banner. (This could for example happen should TWiki.net no longer be able to provide the funding). Something for something is a fair principle. As long as the TWiki.org community is in full control of the content of our community server, we should be happy that we can focus on other things and feel comfortable that our servers are in good hands with the bills paid.

-- KennethLavrsen - 08 Sep 2008

I like the idea of the "ad" banner on the download page.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 09 Sep 2008

Note that once we set up geo-distributed servers, that list of banner ads will start to get long (or with rotation?) - right now it would contain twiki.net and FastServers? etc.

-- SvenDowideit - 09 Sep 2008

How about if sponsors are classified? "Gold" sponsors get an ad on frontpage and download page, "silver" sponsors get nice logo on pages x and y. I'm sure I have seen examples of that and it made sense, sponsors get some fair advertisement depending on how much they put into the project. And very important, a page that gathers all sponsors and that is linked from the frontpage.

-- LarsEik - 09 Sep 2008

Right up to the point where you realize that someone has to administer and enforce such a thing?

-- SvenDowideit - 09 Sep 2008

Don't these other ads and links have to be administered and edited sometimes? By having "rules" for gold, silver etc it could even be "TWiki automated" who gets ad's where by using forms and a query...ehh I think, like "tip of the day" does?

-- LarsEik - 09 Sep 2008

Lars, I am only pointing out that you are casually suggesting that 'someone' have yet more work todo - perhaps you might look at how regularly the 'tip of the day' database is updated. Administering an 'ads' system on the other hand requires not just someone to define good rules, but also then to make sire that everyone beleives they are fairly administered - all of which takes even more time.

please, consider all of the side effects of your 'simple' proposals.

-- SvenDowideit - 09 Sep 2008

I guess we could come up with an AdvertisementPlugin? then (or, it that would be too slow, with static references that point to images which are exchanged on a regular basis). A cronjob could control the contents of all topics in order to verify that tags/links don't start to show up everywhere--in the latter case, the author of such a tag gets banned. While this requires some effort, we're talking about financial support here (which is supposed to pay off for TWiki.org), so this shouldn't be a serious problem (it's a balancing of factors, after all).

I'd suggest we move this part of the discussion to a proper topic (if none exists already, didn't look it up) until this becomes effective

-- MarkusUeberall - 09 Sep 2008

I don't believe that anyone wants to limit the commercial possibilities of any TWiki-related business. Everyone needs the synergy of a successful open source project and multiple commercial entitities to spread adoption and growth and help pay for development.

But those commercial possibilities should not be carried out on the website for the open source project. Sponsored advertisements (as Kenneth says, "something for something") that are clearly labeled as such are fine. Anything else should be compared to an advertisement in a magazine, made to look like editorial content in that magazine, but not labeled as an advertisement. It not only confused the reader, it's unethical.

-- DavidWolfe - 09 Sep 2008

we should keep the ads at minimum. A banner on top of the download page for those that are funding the servers, and small banners/links below the download links for those that sponsored some development. I bet that TWIKI.NET will have a permanent small banner there as they intentions is to make contributions to TWiki.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 09 Sep 2008

It is a pity that some of the points agreed upon during the summit, are already being retracted. Didn't we agree 'no permanent seat for Peter' already?

From my viewpoint, there are quite some unacceptable points in TWiki.net's counter-proposal. As long as TWiki.net wants to monopolize sponsoring the project, i see no reason they should be able to get a special banner. Why not open up sponsorship to the project, and deal with for example hosting costs on that basis?

I'm merely touching the tip of the iceberg here. I currently am not in the position to spend a whole lot of time negotiating with TWiki.net. Frankly, I think the point to negotiate has been passed long ago, and I was under the impression that at the summit the community was of the same opinion.

I was hopeful, but i fear it is not going to happen. The demands twiki.net are making are, in my eyes, unreasonable in light of their actual contributions and of their behaviour so far. Instead of making demands, why doesn't twiki.net show it can play nice with the community instead of trying to dominate it? Only when that happens, can I even consider active involvement in the project again (either that or a fork of course).

-- KoenMartens - 19 Sep 2008

I have not seen an 'official' response to TWIKI.NET's request of 07 Sep 2008. We have delegated this to the interim board.

-- ArthurClemens - 19 Sep 2008

Forking... that word make me realize the kind of poison pill the Trademark attribution being demanded by TWIKI.NET is. If anyone attempts to fork TWiki, by GPL rules they must attribute the original project, and by trademark rules they must put the trademark statement.

"MyOwnFork is a fork of TWiki. TWiki is a registered trademark to Peter Thoeny, TWIKI.NET".

The end result, is that any TWiki fork could end up giving free marketing to TWIKI.NET.

IANAL, so here is the question: If somebody fork (which I don't intend, nor recommend at this point), can he choose to let out the TWIKI.NET from the copyright attribution (which would be legal, anyway)?

-- RafaelAlvarez - 19 Sep 2008

I have been quietly watching the activities in the community since the interim governance team is in place. I see very promising things, such as forming some task teams. I will give it some more time, but frankly, overall I am not impressed so far:

• TWiki downloads on SF dropped by two third in Sep (from 300/day to 100/day). I attribute that to two things: [1] Uncertainty users see if an official body publicly threatens to fork, and [2] an uncoordinated security release. Both have been very damaging to the project. Losing users means losing market share, this is very severe! I think the interim governance team would do the community a great favor by removing that public threat in all Codev topics.
• Secrecy of interim governance team. There is no dialog with key stakeholders. Since the summit I have not been contacted once to discuss key issues as perceived by the interim governance team. (TWIKI.NET has received an e-mail about a week ago; no comments at this time; we will respond as time permits.)
• An uncoordinated security release and an uncoordinated TWiki 4.2.3 release.
• Except for Kenneth, interim governance team members are not participating in the weekly IRC meetings. Engaging with the community is leadership.
  • (Speaking of engaging with the community: What about your IRC presence till - lets say - 2007? -- OliverKrueger - 12 Oct 2008)
• As I stated above on 07 Sep 2008, I will reduce my twiki.org time to allow other community members to step in. I also stated that a I see the collaborative maintenance of twiki.org as a true test on how sincere the democratization process is. So far there are discussions in TWikiOrgWebsiteFacilitatorTaskTeam but no actions on what I used to do as documented in TWikiOrgWebsiteFacilitatorRole:
  • The TWiki documentation web is unmaintained. Every day topics in the TWiki web get more out of sync with SVN. So far nobody stepped up to own the TWiki.org documentation.
  • The Plugins web is less maintained. So far nobody stepped up to maintain it with some TLC.
    • We do not have sufficient documentation from you of what needs doing. - Sven
  • The Support web is less maintained. SeanCMorgan does an excellent job, but there is very little help by others. The currently 111 open questions is at an all time high.
  • The Sandbox web is not maintained. The WebHome page remains destroyed for days, same for sample apps such as MeetingMinutes. I am fixed those once in a while, but nobody stepped up to own the Sandbox web.
    • We do not have sufficient documentation from you of what needs doing. - Sven
  • The tags are a mess. So far nobody stepped up to maintain them with some TLC.
    • We do not have sufficient documentation from you of what needs doing. - Sven
  • (The Main web is in good shape, I continue to own it.)
    • Sven would like to point out that you do not 'own' the Main web - I have been doing quite a bit of cleanup in that web. It is insulting to be told that you're quite unaware, and uninterested in the work others are doing. - 11 Oct 2008
  • (The Codev web refactoring work is in relatively good shape thanks to Rafael and others.)

I know we can do better. It is my sincerest wish that the community comes together and that all pull on the same string so that this democratization process turns out well. Democracy is a privilege not a right. The good news is that we are in complete agreement on the TWikiRoadMap, and we have a refined and well accepted TWikiReleaseManagementProcess.

-- PeterThoeny - 11 Oct 2008

Peter, you have been asked many times to give a more detailed idea of what you've been doing, so others can help. I started to document what I knew, and have been cleaning up Main web (apparently without you even noticing) - but I was quite unaware that the Tags system needed work - and worse, as its your plugin, I have no idea what maintainence tools exist for them.

You need to document things to make it possible for others to help.

-- SvenDowideit - 12 Oct 2008

Peter, I agree. Nor am I impressed. Neither was I impressed by TWiki's progress the recent years. Just compare the activity boost within the community after the first TWiki summit - which was very positive and energetic - with the all time low level of contributions to TWiki since Berlin. Obviously something different happened. Well, frankly, Berlin was a historical moment that nobody really enjoyed. Nevertheless, it was the most important thing that happened to TWiki for years. Our project structure is in a process of moving from one extreme to another. This is very serious. The key factor however, that will revive this project is a good outcome of the ongoing negotiation process between TWIKI.NET and the Interim Board of Directors. I really hope that we will be able to report to all of the community about what is going on there, and that this will create the needed wake-up call. But as this process is so important and fragile, the IBOD rather prefers to work behind the scene for now not to put the process in any danger. Judging from that situation, it is no surprise that most of the major contributors have come to a wait-and-see attitude.

-- MichaelDaum - 12 Oct 2008

Michael, you are absolutely right: Alot of developers wait for this unsolved Peter-issue.

-- OliverKrueger - 12 Oct 2008

Regarding the sourceforge statistics: the stats page does not list the 4.2.3 release in the Release dropdown. It might be a measurement error.

-- ArthurClemens - 12 Oct 2008

Ah, you are right Arthur! The links to the 4.2.3 packages point to the pub directory, not the Sourceforge repository. That, is SF stats don't get the twiki.org traffic at all. This comes back to the uncoordinated 4.2.3 release question.

Kenneth: If you find time, could you release 4.2.3 to SF?

-- PeterThoeny - 12 Oct 2008

I don't understand this agitation about the 4.2.3 release. I only see that we had a security problem and lots of bad press, that we couldn't have avoided anyway. This has been fixed quite uninterrupted. We should be thank full about it instead, shouldn't we. There might have been some bumps in the road but actually that does not really matter. So please stop hitting that uncoordinatedness bell as it serves only negative purposes.

-- MichaelDaum - 12 Oct 2008

What would be involved in a coordinated release?

-- ArthurClemens - 12 Oct 2008

At the moment I am very concerned about the actual situation and do not see any progress. That is may because the IBOD communicates within their group, but that also is not helpful, if it lasts too long. It is more than one month since the Berlin meeting and still there is no visible result.

My appeal is to find a practical way in working together. Perhaps some people need to talk not writing in a forum or sending emails around (any agreement should be in writing and published on TWiki of course).

Perhaps the project needs full employed moderators or whatever to coordinate things. I do not know, how other FOSS are organised, but the actual situation is not satisfying and concentrating on the 4.2.3 looses the focus. I would like to spend more time myself, but unfortunately I simply can't afford it.

-- WolfMarbach - 12 Oct 2008

The Interim Governance Team (IGT) has avoided public discussions because we wanted to avoid the prejudiced and intemperate public flame wars that have poisoned earlier discussions. We have worked as hard as we can within the IGT to establish a united and reasonable position, and it has not been easy. I suspect that those of you who voted for the IGT members knew it wasn't going to be. After a difficult and sometimes acrimonious debate we finally arrived at a common position that we communicated to TWIKI.NET on 4th October. This position has not been made public yet, because we wanted to give TWIKI.NET the opportunity to respond without further pressure from the baying crowds.

Preparing this position has been slower that we would have liked as well, for various reasons; unavailability of IGT members being the main one. Unfortunately we all have first (personal) lives, and since Berlin they have been getting in the way of the business of the IGT. You have my personal apologies for that, but I'm afraid that as time permits is a problem that will continue to affect me.

From my perspective, since the summit I have been encouraged by a shift of focus in Codev from political bitching to more constructive proposals and actions. A few people have used the new task-team system and stepped up to take leadership of pet projects. I'd like to think that at least these few people don't expect impossible instant fixes, have recognised that we will arrive at a more representative, democratic project, and in the meantime are not letting politics get in the way of contribution.

The rest of you, if you can't find the energy to do anything else, at least address one of Peter's points and help out in Support web. Positive contribution will move the project forward. Political point-scoring can only drag it backwards.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 13 Oct 2008

I'm quite sick of the implications by Peter and Kenneth that the 4.2.3 release was 'un-coordinated'.

It was not, they simply stopped responding to requests for help completing the process when I actually bothered to do the work to create a set of fixes, and build a release.

Its quite annoying, and surprising, that as someone that has probably built and released over half the releases of TWiki since 2005, I still do not have permission to upload those releases to sourceforge, and worse, despite my repeated requests for the 2 people that do have access (Kenneth and Peter) to upload the 4.2.3 release, its took over a month for either of them to do so, thus compromising another months' worth of user's systems.

I understand that people are busy, but there is a point where you have to understand your limitations, and allow others to do their work.

-- SvenDowideit - 14 Oct 2008

"I have been quietly watching the activities in the community since the interim governance team is in place. I see very promising things, such as forming some task teams. I will give it some more time, but frankly, overall I am not impressed so far: ".

I repeat: I will not participate until twiki.net has proven to be a trusthworthy community-member. The Berlin summit was promising, but we're now back into the waiting game, waiting for answers from twiki.net that are not forthcoming. Earning a reputation of being untrustworthy is easy, getting back that trust requires hard work by twiki.net which frankly i haven't seen any indication of! I am not impressed so far.

Twiki.net went about like an elephant in the porcelain cabinet, and that created a lot of negative feelings within the community (as Tom had to find out at the Berlin summit). If you want to point fingers at people, dont point at the community but do some self-reflection first!

-- KoenMartens - 14 Oct 2008