Key: [20:36] indicates a time check. Other text [in brackets] is interpolated or summarised. .... indicates repetition or incoherence

Kenneth agreed to take notes
Lynnwood facilitated

[08:20] Lynnwood: Purpose of meeting is number 1 refining new TWiki governance,
desired outcome is to define TWiki Community Council, and number 2 to find 
owners for urgent bugs.
Peter: open up first item for freeform discussion around governance, lots of 
discussion on codev, better to clarify some items
Kenneth: no need to spend time on bugs, covered elsewhere, being covered
MichaelDaum: pick up discussions on IntroducingTWikiGovernance and 
TWikiGovernance. Thank you Peter for the replies to online q's. Maybe not all 
answered sufficiently. Would like to see more TWiki discussions and rapid 
exchange of ideas, many people out there with much to say. Do we agree to 
that? Most important is what goes on on Codev, must keep in touch with what 
goes on there before starting new....
[16.39] Martin Seibert: I suggest we go round participants and get 0.5 minutes 
on approach on governance and personal issues, opinions on behavioural issues. 
Summarise what they read and what their opinion is
Michael Daum: defer all comments until everyone has gone
Lynnwood Brown: keep it brief (2-3 mins each)
Michael Daum: take notes as you listen
Martin Seibert: read that there is a discussion going on that is based on some 
behaviour that Peter Thoeny or actions that he took within the last days, 
weeks and basically it is about violating community rules. Peter sometimes 
violates and people get angry. Peter states that there are also other people 
violating rules and although I'm new I was also angry and upset when I saw 
the TWIKI.NET banner on the download page and gave some comments. I was really 
glad that Peter was excusing himself for doing that and reverting or letting 
us revert and I read somebody said that that should stop and I agree and I 
think that Peter's excuse is a first step in that direction and is enough for 
me, waiting and hoping for the future to come still I think that we as a 
community and as people should be aware that Peter is a very important 
contributor for TWiki and not discuss his person too much here. Finished.
[20:36] Michael Daum: first of all I'd like to propose another member to the 
TCC that has been mailed around, Lynnwood Brown. Hi Lynnwood, I made an email 
to Peter to propose you because of your immense background on that field. OK, 
so let's come to my concerns about [?] proposals. First off I don't think that 
the analogy to the Ubuntu project for TWiki is appropriate. This has already 
been expressed in length a couple of weeks ago by Crawford in UbuntuAndTWiki 
in Codev. please all read this and comment there. By analogy this would mean 
that TWiki.NET would take over control over TWiki in great extent which is 
not acceptable. It may be I just misunderstood that, this needs clarification. 
I think most of us would agree that TWIKI.NET can't take over control over 
TWiki. Peter has to make clear that he does have two hats that he is using 
and that he will interchange them appropriately whatever power he will have. 
It might be a problem to separate those, open source interests and commercial 
interests having such a powerful position. I'm not sure this can work out in 
the long run. In especially I don't want TWIKI.NET to be hard-coded into the 
open source project TWiki. This is a danger for TWiki to flourish organically 
safe in such a setting. There has been a new topic HighLevelTWikiStrategy, 
which seems to be intended as a base to create a vote for the BDFL. There is 
no agreement on this writing, there, so it can't be a legitimate vote base. I 
don't see that the current proposal is that different to what we had before 
using the core team. And this hasn't been a success just to answer one of my 
own questions. [22:58] One thing I really like about that proposal is creating 
of interest groups or focus groups. However I think the one and only weakness 
of that proposal is the static nature of such a set of focus teams might not 
work out for the current size of the community. So people are in many focus 
teams or have many interests and would be difficult to categorise them in such 
a static way. Most of the time TWiki people show up and are doing some stuff 
and by their doing are identified as kind of stakeholders in some areas. That 
works more organically and indirectly that what is proposed there. 
Nevertheless I like to see focus teams on a non-individual level more of an 
organisational level where people come together and discuss how they are 
using TWiki and that is how I would like to see focus teams come to life.
[24:30] Kenneth Lavrsen: I would actually like to hear in a statement longer 
than the 2 minutes we have here what Peter's vision about the project is seen 
in a 3-4 years where do you see the project going both from the content and 
the community. I would also like you to explain to us how TWIKI.NET's position 
is going to be in relation to the community. When I look at the new governance 
proposal (and I think there is a significant difference from the core team) 
which is that the new org both seems to delegate more but it also defines the 
role of benevolent dictator role so it pulls in both directions and that can 
be a little confusing. the way I understand is that the TCC basically only 
takes care of the community ecosystem (Peter's word) but doesn't really take 
care of what kinds of features go into twiki and how is the code written etc. 
I see it as a board that creates other teams and besides that doesn't really 
do anything, besides being there is a conflict arises and a decision is 
needed. I see the Technical Board as the most powerful and importnant role 
because that is where the techies will sit and have to manage the code and 
make sure the jobs are properly designed and implemented etc. so I see that 
as an important role and it's also a role where I don't expect TWIKI.NET or 
Peter to have much interest in having a very visible role. I think that's 
very much more of a community role, where things like how TWiki is marketed 
and so on is more where TWIKI.NET will play an more active role. That's how 
I expect there will be small teams on release management of one or two or 
three people and other specifics. I like the new proposal but need the BDFL 
role well defined. It's a dictator role of course; you cannot democratically 
defined a dictator role it doesn't make sense but I would still like to know 
what Peter was going to use it for.
[28:28] Andre Ulrich: I also looked at the TWiki docs and quite surprised that 
only 2 hours before the meeting there are answers to questions. I think it's 
quite late, it takes too long. The whole community discussed, Peter, it was a 
whole week waiting for a response, and I think you have to step up earlier to 
respond, to get involved. I please you do that next time so we don't wait for 
another week. I also responded already to the BDFL. I think the future leader 
of the TWiki project, I think the main reason why all this is coming, from the 
mixing up of twiki net and twiki org. Twiki net came very late in the process
and has a very very dominant stance here. You define it everywhere in the 
TWiki registration process from the release marks and so on and this mixup 
of interests is very conflictary, and I think we have to define, either you 
segment your roles, either as the project leader of an open source project, 
or as a CIO or whatever in a company. You can't be both at once, and that is
the main interest conflict. These roots are coming from 5 years. We just 
ignored it a few times but it can't be ignored now, I'm very glad it comes to 
this point and we have to change it, actualy. Regarding the governance 
proposal, I see not much change, maybe they are different, the focus teams, 
i don't know. It is more or less nothing new for me at least. What's important
is to define it more openly. We really don't get it, the strategy of high 
level. i think we fight for a community here, so this gets healthy and more 
populated, but this fight is more [like] a commercial fight maybe, I don't 
know. Really, really upset me. I think we can get it clear but if it when 
doesn't get resolved in next few weeks I think it very very get hurt, the 
project.
[32:30] Crawford Currie: first raised the issue of TWiki not having a roadmap 
several years ago, and several other people shared that concern. To this day 
TWiki has no long-term roadmap. I feel this has been a major factor in failure 
to execute. If people can't see where TWiki is going they will make up their 
own direction, sometimes with the result of tearing us apart rather than 
pulling us together. I still think execution is really the problem and what 
this conflict is doing is taking us away from executing effectively on a 
longer term roadmap for TWiki. I have concerns about Peter's ability to 
separate his commerical interests from a role as the BDFL, though in principle 
I don't have any objection to having a dictator at the helm as long as that 
dictator is making effective decisions that are in the best interests of the 
open source community and is not driven by commercial considerations. A 
community like TWiki is built on two things; it is built on trust, and 
respect. The leader of the rganisation, whoever it is who is going to make 
the decisions, has to respect the community, has to respect that these people 
are competent and can be delegated to. In turn the people within the community 
have to trust the leadership will act in the best interests of the open source 
project. I feel that we are not currently in that position and the current 
governance proposal is casting a veneer over an atmosphere of distrust and 
lack of respect.
[35:23] Eugen Mayer: in my eyes I don't see too many people being active to 
establish all those kinds of groups in there .... without more than two people 
in a group you don't get [all interests covered]. I see that we don't have too 
much trust, for me just now it's Peter, .... for example the banner... even 
the timing of that is so bad .... when all the governance discussion is going 
on .... I don't understand how Peter found that decision .... that he really 
respects the community .... I see myself being demotivated .... I am losing 
respect for Peter now ... I don't like the way we act as a community, we 
should stay together, we have a lot of personal and commercial interests 
and .... we have to think what is best for the [open source] community. 
Second point .... I see the same problem separating .net and .org is a hard 
thing and ... is not easy... but to have a person who .... has powers in both 
projects we have to trust that person a lot, and that;s what I'm missing .... 
we have to fix that first .... or choose someone who is able to match this 
position a bit better.
[40:00] unidentified person just joining tjhe call
[41:00] Lynnwood Brown: What stands out in my mind most is the need for some 
clarity. I don't feel that having ambiguous agreements, or very simplistic 
agreements, has served us very well. Different interpretations [have] caused 
problems in the past. Give history, I feel we need clarity of what Peters 
role in leadership, clearly he is founder for life and has some assets that 
he stewards but what his specific authroties are it is critical we have 
clarity as that would be the basis of trust. For Peter to act as leader we 
need places where we can talk to him as equals. If he can override any 
agreements we make or impose a particular interpretation of events it is very 
hard to have a discussion with trust. For example the high level twiki 
strategy document [is hard to engage with]. What is the forum where Peter has 
the ability to engage with the others on a basis of equality, if it's not 
twiki.org? First it's very important that we have clarity on what we are 
agreeing to, and second .. important for the community to have a clear 
understanding of how Peters role is defined in terms of what his authorities 
are in the community and what we can count on him for.
[46:30] Peter Thoeny: I would like to address the questions and concerns that 
came up first and then inbetween also give the high level vision the is needed 
to bring the community together. 
So Martin - Actions to violate Community ..., i know that many people go 
angry about this, and I aplogise for this. There has been a couple of reasons, 
I actually first wanted to post the reasons publicly on twiki.org, i shared 
my thoughts with one of the community members, and that community memeber 
recomended not to post those reasons, basically, they just look into the 
future and not into the past. But just to say, why I did that - there was a 
reason behind it, and they are all related to the discussions we have 
currently in the community. But having said that, I think it is the right 
decision to take it back and to I apologise today and I'm going to propose a 
new document to rivist the sponosr question on twiki.org.
On Michael Daum - lets park who is in the TCC, for now, lets do that after 
this discussion. First about Ubuntu and TWiki - I have read Crawford's 
comments there, I would like to state that its quite a different situation, 
on how ubuntu started of off the debian model, so basically, a new person 
just forked off the debian community, so Mark had no connection to the debian 
community, He basically, started a new Ubuntu community with his commercial 
company behind canonical. So thats a key distinction or difference from the 
current setup that we have on twiki.org. I started the TWiki project 10 years 
ago, and recently I decided to bring a commercial aspect to this project, so 
it is not like I am forking away from this community like mark did for ubuntu,
thats why that can't be really directly compared one on one.
Maybe releated to this, I modeled this new governance proposal quite closely 
on the Ubuntu model for several reasons - so Ubuntu is highly successful, has 
a community, ..... let me goto the next point....
on Micheal's point that the TCC is no different to the core team, I disagree 
with this statement, the TCC is only concerned with community matters, and not 
about the actual core code, where actually the name core team comes from. 
Maybe I would like to summarise how I see what the responsibilities of the 
TCC - basically a social structure of our community and our processes within 
the community should be supervised by the TCC, and if the TCC apprves the 
creation of new focus teams and should appoint the team lead, and one very 
important task within *** that we way better than we have done before is to 
define better out processes so we can meet expectations. A lot of 
dissagreements are simply caused by different expectations. Thats why the TCC 
should be defining a code of conduct, that basically defines how the community 
shoudl work with each other, and so the TCC also should be initially 
appointed, I think somebody pointed out that at this stage the level of trust 
is low, I would agree with this, so thats why a vote initially, to establish 
this team, would not really work well, why i think it is best to have this 
team appointed and then, some time next year, possibly at the feb community 
summit, we do the first vote, so that the community council memebers are 
elected for a 2 year period.
on the point about focus teams, that the community is too small, I would 
agree with that, i would also like to point out that it is an oportunity to 
grow our community. The new governance, as designed, is designed also so that 
the community can grow, also that there is more delegation than we had.
Rafeal also wrote this nicely on the IntroducingTWikiGovernance Page. We have 
in fact, quite a well defined process or governance how we operate overall, 
we have alt of things we agree on, unlike Crawford, I think the high level 
roadmap we have a clear understanding where TWiki should go, and details need 
to be worked out.
On Kenneth - would like to know where the project goes with the community - 
that is a very important question, as you all know, I've been working for 10 
years to try grow the whole ecosystem of TWiki, for example when we introduced 
the Plugins API, the whole community started to grow quite quickly, and I 
expect the same thing with the application marketplace. So thats why I think 
it is quite important that we focus on this, to even more grow the community. 
We have today, with all these other wiki's out there, quite some competition, 
i woudl say that 2 years ago, that we have been ahead of the pack, today, we 
are are in certain small areas ahead of the pack, on application features, 
but in many many areas we are quite behind the competition. For example the 
usability of Confulence is quite better than TWiki, and of other wiki's as 
well. So we have quite some work to do to catch up, and quite unfortuanate 
the disagreements that we have in the community, have been, I would say the 
largest contributor to not being able to be ahead of the competition as we 
used to be. Thats one goal that I personally have for the community, taht we 
again regain this compeditive edge, that we used to have and that requires 
that we work together pulling the same string.
On the tech****, I fully argee with Kenneth, I would expect that everybody 
thinks that Crawford should be the leader of that team, and who else needs 
to be in that team, that needs to be seen. personally, as Kenneth says, I do 
not see that my role to be too much involved - of course involved for key 
things, but that should eb the responisbility of the tech board, to apply to 
high level of packaging standards, etc etc of the twiki project.
As far as the BDFL role, I think that is again something that has not been 
stated in the past, other teams where it has been stated from the beining, 
it was never questioned, so I understand that by me self declaring the BDFL 
role, that there are quite some eyebrows raised. I think it is paramount that 
the BDFL role is not to be abused, because that will undermine trust. It is 
not uncommon in the open source world that there are multiple very good 
arguments but that no clear consensus can be reached, and those arguments 
divide the community rather than bring them together, and we have seen that 
now for at least 6 months. So these arugment absorb the energy that other 
would be used for much more productive things. In some cases, there is no 
right answer, but there needs to eb made a decision, I do not see the BDFL 
role to take those decisions, i think the primary entity to regulate that 
and over see that is the TCC.
(unknown) : Peter, maybe you can introduce your ideas on the TCC - it might 
not be clear it means TWiki Community Council - and what it does.
Peter Thoeny: We havn't defined it yet in detail, basically what i jsut said 
before, the TCC is basically responsible to supervise the social, first of 
all to define/refine and then to supervise the social structures and also 
the community processes. its also the body that is appointing the focus teams, 
and initially the technical board, and again later on that should (the 
technical board) be an elected body once we have the trust in the community. 
This entity is the entity responsible for the code of conduct, that needs to 
be defined, as well as overseeing that the community memebers are following 
those guidlines. This includes everybody including the BDFL. Thats just in 
short - more details need to be worked out, i expect that the TCC would eb 
quite active initially, over teh next maybe 2-3 weeks, until we have defined 
the social structures, and the code of conduct, and then once the is in place, 
then i see not so much activity within the TCC. Then maybe they need to meet 
maybe once every 2 weeks, or every month after taht initial period. I think 
its quite important that the TCC and also all other teams work transparently, 
we have had a history here of alot of traffic going on here behind the scenes, 
most recently with the ##twiki.devs irc channels, and so I think the community 
will learn over time, that once we have the code of conduct, and this process 
is defined, to work better together, and that the chances of frictions are 
because of these processes that we define.
Andre - you said that you do not see like a big change of the status quo with 
the current governance proposal, I think, as I just mentioned before, this new 
govenance proposal will be much crisper defined, and the code of conduct 
processes that it will be much better understood on the epxectations of each 
community memeber which should reduce friction. i think thats the key 
value/benefit of this new governance structure.
Andre, you also said you do not understand the high level strategy - Here I 
think we have a specific point with the community that is not resolved, and 
it needs some more discussions. there are some people in the community that 
push for a TWikiAlliance, which is basically, as far as i understand, sinilar 
to how the postgres community works, so the postgress community there are 
basically 2 probably equal sized companies behind the community, supporting 
the community, and history has shown that this model is commercially not that 
successful, or that this community/project lost market share over time to 
mySQL, and I think its an excellent database project, state of the art, but 
it lost market share, and I think for the TWiki project I do not wish to be 
in that situation. i think its much better to be in the model of Ubuntu with 
Canonical, or in the model or fedora with redhat, or in the model of mySQL 
with the company mySQL which was aquired by Sun. now the mySQL is maybe not 
directly one to one applicable because mySQL ownes 100% the copyright and 
external code has the copyright assigned over to the company. We are more in 
the ubuntu model, or Fedora model I would say, which is much more applicable. 
In order for our project (this is a long term vision) to be viable in the 
market place, to be recognised also in the news, 2, 3, 4 years time, I think 
its very important that we have a strategy that we agree on and as i have 
seen that we have a number of people who maybe do not understand this strategy 
or also dissagree with this strategy. At this point, (this is now related to 
TWIKI.NET), the comapny is still a tiny company, we spent considerable effort
to support the community to a degree that is almost not responsible towards 
the investors, we are not yet in the position to basically have a sustainable 
business at this time, wich is natrul for a startup. but once the company has 
grown and gets more business the company will be much better enabled to that 
promise fo working like redhat or canonical. (back to the community) So 
basically this highlevel strategy is a way to, which i firmly beleive, is a 
way to get the project succeeding and thives much better than now is an 
appropriate model.
(1:08:00) To Crawford - On the roadmap, As i mentinoed before I do not really 
agree with the statement, we do have a real roadmap, its a very high level 
roadmap, that we defined and agreed on at the first summit, we worked again 
just a little bit on second summit, and i expect that the community will work 
on it in the Berlin summit, mainly to refine the roadmap. ont eh execution 
problem, question that Crawford is stateing, I actually agree, to quite some 
degree, and again, the key problem there is that we as a community and I as 
the leader of the community , we have not been working diligently enough to 
define processes where we can set clear expectations, and then execute 
acording to those expectations. Again this new governance proposal should 
make alot of headway to work towards that, to more transperancy, and a 
community way to work with each other.
lets see, Eugen, I should have addressed the vision, i basically agree with 
what you said, (I can't make out this sentence), and i would like to state 
that it will never be possible, for everyone to agree whats best for the 
community, because everybody has different interests, and backgrounds. Thats 
why we need discussion, and then basically just go in one direction. The 
current situation of pulling in different directions, is mroe damaging to 
the community than adding to the community.
(1:11:00) Lynnwood's point - authority, what my role is, i think i addressed 
this just before, with the governance question, i think thats about it. any 
follow on questions on this?
(1:11:30) Michael Daum: There are lots of point that we have to elaborate, 
let me capture a few things that you agreed as well as the others, and that 
is that we will have problems with defining focus teams given the current 
size of the community. So i think that is going to be a major problem as sad 
as it is. Connected to that, is actually my proposal to have a TWikiAlliance, 
as an entry point for commercial entities outside of twiki to provide feedback 
to twiki and an entry door to formulate what they think twiki is lacking most, 
or needs most, or is doing good or whatever. And i think if we had some group 
of, or a non-profit forum of that kind it could be of great value for any 
further twiki development. There is a lot of good feedback that I get from 
paying customers, very profound, very clear, and if that could be given to 
all of the twiki community in a very coordinated way that would be really 
great. Thats where I see that this would help to build up a greater community, 
and to bring more people into focus groups. I think you might have misread it 
in a way, because twiki alliance is actually non-profit, its not related to 
commercial interests in that direct a way. So its not related to postgres or 
something, its related more to just an audience of / consortium of people who 
are interested, of companies that are interested in twiki and want to express 
themselves in a way.
(1:14:00) Martin Seibert: Peter, could you address Michael's suggestion
because this  is also something that I thing would be very helpful for twiki,
and i would  like to know from you, do you favour, or do you not favour, a
non profit foundation beside twiki.net
Peter:  in principle, I'm open to a non-profit entity, however i have quite
some  reservations at this time. That might look different in a year or two
years  time. Creating a non-profit, and then distributing money thats been
donated  to the project is very difficult, or impossible to distribute the
money fairly, 
(1:15:00) unknown - interjection..
Peter: The current need where money is involved is hosting, .... that's the
major cost. For hosting alone I do not feel the reason for why we need a
non-profit organisation. Now, on the other hand I think it would help a whole 
lot of things to have some kind of organisation or process, where a specific 
work item [can be] published for implementation and people can bid on 
implementing those features. So basically a market place for ... would work 
much better because it is directly related to work items that are going to be 
built. However creating an alliance of people donating and trying to 
distribute money for various things, I think thats difficult and at this time 
of [unintelligible] simply wouldn't work. That's why i think it's a much 
better strategy to go with this new governance model. This will take some 
time to adjust to, this new governance model, and we will build up trust over 
time. Once we have trust then i am more open to look at the twiki alliance or 
a non-profit organisation.
Michael Daum: I think [unintellkigible[
Lynnwood Brown: opened up for questions
[1:18:19] Crawford Currie: the alliance as described is pretty much a customer 
council. It is a group of people who provide inputs that help us set the 
direction of twiki. As such this would be perhaps not in twiki net's best 
interests, if twiki net would wish to retain control over the direction of 
twiki. I want to ask Peter directly if that is what is influencing his 
resistance to the alliance.
Peter: the question is if there would be a customer council how that relates 
to twiki net and twiki org?
Crawford: the twiki alliance would effectively be a customer council that 
would be driving direction for twiki, it would set where twiki would go, and 
that wound't really be in the best interests of twiki net, and I want to ask 
you directly if that's the reason for your resistance to the alliance.
Peter: no, the main reason is .... distribute funds. The customer council as 
I see it is not dependent on the alliance. A CC is a very good idea .... and 
that could be one of the focus groups.
Crawford: so, if the question about funding was answered, your resistance to 
a twiki alliance would evaporate? .... I'm trying to clarify in my own mind 
the real reason for Peter's resistance to a twiki alliance, and Peter [says 
he is] is concerned that the funding would not be fairly distributed, and that 
is the only reason why he is resistant to it.
Kenneth Lavrsen: that is exactly the same reason why I've been against it. 
this alliance/foundation with the scope of distributing funding. For example 
if Crawford says he can implement something and says if you can pay for it 
then i want this to be a free conversation between companies including twiki 
net I think twiki net will more be on the funding side than on the receiving 
side. i think that th free entrprise model and thinking that we can find 
people totally unbiased who will sit in the council and never ever get 
themselves into the shooting range when they do. Who's friends with who and 
so on. I don't see twiki net as part of the conflict. I see the conflict as 
more in the guys that have legitimate business interests.
Crawford: ok thanks Kenneth I will consider that question answered.
[1:22:33] Michael Daum: Let's discuss this twiki alliance thing independently 
and continue in other places.
Lynnwood: Peter I have one small question on your twiki governance proposal. 
You're saying that initially the members of the Technical council and the 
community council would be appointed and I think later you mention that it 
would be by yourself and some prior member of the core team. So who would be 
appointing?
Peter: I already have been talking to some members, initially with Kenneth 
because Kenneth is the most community oriented person [?]. I talked to Arthur, 
I talked to Martin Seibert, and I didn't directly talk to Michael Daum ... 
but basically these are the persons we feel are the right persons to be 
initially appointed to the TCC. So Arthur, Kenneth, Michael, Martin and myself.
Michael Daum: I'd like to propose Lynnwood as well.
Peter: I'm not too much in favour of adding one more person from .... I think 
MD you are quite good open community thinker you have a decent sense .... ok, 
maybe I said something wrong .... I didn't want to imply anything on Lynnwood 
in that. I think a size of 5 people is just about right for the TCC it should 
not be too big and it should be also an odd number so that if there is a 
discussion that is not concensus building ... it is easier to make a decision.
MD: if you need an odd number then I do think Lynnwood is suiting better than 
me in the role of being a member of TCC
Peter: OK, frankly speaking I have some personal reservations with Lynnwood 
Brown .... to the TCC.
MD: Oh. That's very unfortunate.
Peter: Yes. So once we have the TCC established and once development is 
working ... and we have built up the trust then i think it's eventually 
important that we change over to an election model. This is actually quite in 
contrast to Ubuntu. In Ubuntu Mark Shuttleworth is appointing members by 
himself actually.
MD: Let me make this one thing clear, I think that getting over personal 
[issues] .... would be a great opportunity just for pointing out some of the 
members that might be personal problem to you. ... just to get more balance 
into this very important initial step. And I do think that Lynnwood did write 
the initial first proposal to the governance question (that he has withdrawn 
altogether for several reasons) is of immense value to this big task. And I 
would be very pleased to see if you could just overthink your decisions within 
the next days.
Peter: OK, I'm willing to reconsider it, and ... well no, that's no, let's 
bring, I will bring the ....
[1:28:00] Kenneth Lavrsen: i nomintaed MD and what i said to Peter when we 
first discussed the council and .... you were the first name I came up with  
and I said the council should represent all the different aspects ...., 
shouldn't be too many developers shouldn't be too many marketing or too many 
of a specific kind so representing the deveelopers it was either you or 
Crawford, and since I thnk Crawford needs to be on the technical board as 
chairman I can't see any other role for Crawford in this, it is too important 
to give to anyone else, I suggested you as a developer and Lynnwood being a 
very concious person, on the community is not a perl developer and we need a 
perl developer represented in the council
MD: I don't see the TCC as a place to discuss any perl code
KL: I wanted that there was one member of each type of community member
MD: the TCC is about building community and trust, this is actually what 
Lynnwood is doing, and [has done] successfully [in] many places and that's 
why I was pointing that out. So, in the end it would be great opportunity to 
build up more trust within the TCC as well.
PT: I would like to say something to that. I actually think it is important 
to work with people, we want people, that are sticking around and active also 
in difficult times, so we have seen some people always showing up, or not 
always but regularly showing up in release and marketing meetings so frankly 
I think we have a higher success to work with people who are here for the 
community more often than not. This is for one reason I think MD is a good 
fit for this TCC role.
[1:30:30] Andre Ulrich: I think the TWikiGovernance proposal from Peter, it 
is being treated here as if it is already approved by someone there is [some] 
high [level] comments against this proposal, not exactly against the TCC ... 
there is no agreement reached now, and you treat everything as it's proposed 
... and you proposed it ... and the BDFL is ... Lynnwood pointed it out one 
time, it is time for the people to stand up who actually want a BDFL, and as 
Crawford said, [whether] the BDFL is able to do it. I'm really not convinced, 
I doubt that BDFL .... that .... Peter is able to do it. I'd like to talk a 
bit about the proposal and this is going in too deep, who is going to be the 
council and what part is it, and where do they come from. We are speaking of 
a proposal which is not even approved by someone if it's good or if there is 
another way or a better way.
[1:32:16] Martin Seibert: May I address that? I think you are coming from
Germany also, donÕt you? (Andrew Ulrich: yea) And weÕre trying to establish a
kind of democratic way that will lead to a situation where Peter admits to
follow certain rules and maybe also rulings of a certain council until whoever
maybe on there... 
[1:34:29] Andre Ulrich: Can we have Peter answer the question? I know what
parliment is and so on. I think we are old enough for this, but IÕd like to
hear Peter about that. 
[1:34:45] Peter: I think IÕve said this before, so in two years time we will 
have elections. At this time, there is a low level of trust, so it would be a 
wrong situation to make this a democratic process to elect the TCC members. 
I think this is right approach we have here at this meeting that Lynnwood 
Brown is proposed to be part of the TCC. I will take that into consideration 
together with the TCC as think we want to start with. 
[1:35:45] Andre Ulrich: But you are talking about the TCC but this is in your 
proposal and I have not heard anyone who wants to BDFL or said Òoh, we have to 
vote the TCCÓ. This was on the list for today that you want to vote but I didn't
hear anyone who wants to vote a TCC or talked about it and approved it by the
community. I want to do the first step and not the "we vote in two years". By
the way, this is quite a long time for a software project.
[1:36:45] Martin Seibert: May I speak up again and try to say what I wanted to
say... when Germany lost the second world war and there was [couldn't make out 
name] and he was called the "democratic dictator" a long time and when you want 
to establish a democratic system, which Peter evidently wants to, and which is
at least me and other community members are waiting for desparately, I have no
problem giving him ruling naming people as long as this leads to a democratic 
system and structure. That's my opinion on that.
[1:38:25] Lynnwood: I feel pretty much the same way. I see the TCC as very close 
to what I originally proposed about an interim committee to come up with rules 
of governance for the community and have them clarified. In terms of the make-
up of the TCC, I think it's important to pick people that are neutral but the 
main thing is they will have to wear the hat of the best interest of the 
community as a whole, and not their individual interests, or it won't work.
I share Crawford's concern about a two-year gap. I don't see what there would 
be a need to wait two years to actually have a more democratic process. 
[1:39:54] Peter: No, actually it's not two years. It's one year... with 2 year 
elections also.
[1:40:05] Andre Ulrich: I think your assumption was that we need approximate-
ly one year to build up trust in the community but I think most of the trust 
will come with the TCC being voted democratically because that's most community 
driven then. And we should shorten this period substantially. Even Arthur has 
expressed that he was envisioning a period of three months. And given the 
problems that we have with the TWiki.org project and the upcoming summit, this 
really needs to speeded up. So I'd like to subscribe to Arthur (who unfortun-
ately is not here) that a three month period is working much better than one 
year. One year is so much that, [while] I realise one year is passing rather 
quickly, there are people out there that are cutting into the market that 
twiki.org has made. 
[1:42:13] Martin Seibert: I completely agree with that. I just want to say that 
when we talked on the phone, Peter, I still think people like me who are very 
new to community and a lot of people may hear me the first time today. I would 
like to have, if I am in the interim committee, not have such a long perid 
before people have a chance to vote for someone they think might be more suit-
able.
[1:43:05] Kenneth Lavrsen: How about summit, 2009, 2/1? That would be approxi-
mately 7 months. That would be a good compromise perhaps.
[1:43:17] Martin Seibert: Maybe we don't need to make it a fixed date but maybe 
we should depend it on how the TCC is performing and how good we make progress. 
And if things are set up properly then we can shorten it by proposing what we 
have so far. I also wanted to say something about I think this process is a good 
processfor the community. Nobody or only a few people have the guts to pick up 
the banner when Peter put it up. I didn't. This is a good sign that shows maybe... 
maybe Andre you are right... Peter may not have the right, but he's an author-
ity within this community and I think we all know that. And so, I think it's a 
good thing to accept that for now and to go away with him into a democratic 
process. 
[1:45:21] Kenneth Lavrsen: I think for those who may be uncomfortable with the 
new appointed TCC, I think psychologically it is good to have an event more than 
a date, which is why I proposed a summit event to be also an election event. 
And it could be summit a year from now or a summit a half a year from now. It 
would be too soon for the summit 1 month from now, of course. But the summit 
2009, 2/1, would be 7 months from now. That would maybe be enough. We could 
always have a release meeting and decide to go another half year but I think it 
is nice to have a goal. 
[1:46:29] Martin Seibert: Yes, that is actually true but I think the summit is 
very physical. Most of the people in the TWiki community are not able to join 
where it's at a place. So as an open source community, it's always good to have 
summits and big goals like this but a lot of people won't be able to attend it, 
so I am afraid, if it is not web-based, will not be democratic.
[1:47:21] Kenneth Lavrsen: I was not thinking about making the summit the voting 
event but just having the voting around the summit. Actually, making it like 
a few weeks before means that you have a new TCC meeting at the summit. Most of 
the TCC members would probably be interested in meeting at the summit. Even if, 
depending on where the summit is, we may not all be able to be physically there 
but the whole thing should happen web-based.
[1:48:12] Peter: Yes, I absolutely agree that this is web-based. I think it is 
a good idea coincide it with one of the summits. Initially, I proposed to not 
set a fixed date but a criteria because here it would be the number of active 
contributors who have been... the size of the community... also on the trust 
within the community. But the size of the community is easy to define but the 
level of trust is kind of abstract and not really possible to define. So that is 
why I think it's good to keep one of those two summit dates next year as a first
working date. I'd like to keep this open like this and see where we...
[unintelligible].
[1:50:02] Several people talking at once of unintelligible.
[1:50:50] Crawford: Before we can have a meaningful vote, there has to be some 
constitutional questions answered in terms of where the power is within the 
organizational structure. To me, those are the most important questions we could 
possible answer and I'm not prepared to wait 7 months for answers to those
questions. I've already waited five months and I'm not waiting any longer.
[1:51:45] Peter: Yes, and that's why it important that the TCC is 
defining the processes and communicate structures within the next few weeks.
[1:52:07] Crawford: So you're suggesting that the TCC is going to define the 
constitutional structure... how the governance works.
[1:52:20] Peter: Yes. 
[1:52:47] Andre Ulrich(?): Peter, will you follow those constitutional rules 
Crawford was talking about if those TCC members you named will come up with 
them? 
[1:53:05] Peter: The way of the new election process also needs to be defined. 
So whatever the TCC comes up with, what the constitution is, and how the election 
works, then of course, that needs to be followed.
[1:53:43] Michael Daum: The only reason we need the TCC in the beginning is that 
there is a chicken/egg problem which was described in Lynnwood's first proposal. 
Because there needs to be a root of legitimacy to start governance. And that's 
the main problem that the TCC has to solve... is to build up the kind of root 
where all the power is rooted in. This can be just organizing voting for another 
TCC. 
[1:54:45] Crawford: That's the point, as long as it's done quickly... and as 
long as it's done in public.
[1:55:00] Kenneth Lavrsen: We're sitting here now and we find this is one of the 
most constructive meetings in the community for a long time. And I really think 
we can hear each other and it helps. I really think it is important that this is 
just the first meeting of several that is discussing governance and we need to 
kind of digest a bit. I feel that the BDFL is not a completely rejected idea. 
The role is still one we need to discuss. Peter needs to maybe elaborate a little 
bit more what you want that role for. I support that role. I don't have a problem 
with that, but I think we all want to more what that BDFL guy is going to do the 
next five years. But I also think that some of the things that are in the 
governance proposal should not just be thrown in the hands of community council 
next week. I think it is worth meeting a few more meetings and talk about things 
like technical board. Do people actually want to sit in them? Do the have the 
people needed to make the technical board work? Because if there's no one who 
says "yes, I'll do it" then there's something wrong with the model before we 
can start. And the same with some of the other teams needed. Can we find the 
necessary people for them. Because I don't think in the election process, the 
problem is going to be to elect between people, it's going to be to find people 
in the first place. I'd really like that we follow up with a couple more meetings 
in the near future and continue discussing... not starting all over with the 
same things but trying to dig a little deeper into the open questions that are 
out and will materialize in our brains when we've been sleeping on it a couple 
of times. 
[1:58:19]  : What should we expect in the next couple of weeks?
[1:59:00] Crawford: I think the first thing is to document on the web what 
nacient agreements there are so people can comment. That's the first thing to 
do. 
[1:59:36] Lynnwood: The sooner we can get some body empowered, like the TCC, 
to begin to draft some comprehensive governance policy, the better. That group 
the TCC, can still have some open meetings like this to get input from other 
people like this. The sooner we get some sub-group going, the sooner we'll get 
something back.
[2:00:13] Crawford & Peter: agreed.
[2:00:22] Michael Daum: Let me just point out something I've taken out of this
meeting. First of all, I agree with Kenneth that there is in the end we put a lot 
of issues on the table that have been floating around. But another thing that 
almost every speaker said is that they had problems with the BDFL role. One of 
the most important things is that we found out what the BDLF is. And that will 
be apart of the [non-intelligible]. And maybe a lot of the discussion with 
community as well. And with Peter as to describe what he envisions his role in 
the project and how he would like to act. 
[2:01:42] Peter: Yes, I think that is a very important thing to do for myself. 
To basically define what the dictates of the responsibilities and limitations.
[2:02:10] Crawford: And be forewarmed that if you don't do it, someone else will 
do it for you.
Proceeded to set up weekend meeting.