[DRAFT 3]: Charter for the Open Source Committee

[Lynn Winebarger]

On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Russell Nelson wrote:

> Ean R . Schuessler writes:
>  > In that sense, OSI has probably single handedly struck the most
>  > damaging blow possible to the effort of making the Open Source term a
>  > meaningful tool for the community. As to our duff, it has been busily
>  > fabricating a control structure geared towards a membership oriented
>  > organization.
> 
> In other words, you've created a bureaucracy.  Not only that, but
> you're proud of it.  That's pretty sad (definitely speaking as an
> individual here).

   It's this kind of statement that really makes me wary of OSI.  From all
outward appearances, OSI is an autocracy.  SPI, on the other hand, is on
the path (once the membership rolls start being filled) to providing a
democratic form of governing its assets (e.g. deciding how to dispense
funding for free software development).  That's not sad, it's great.  That
some level of structure is needed to coordinate the democratic process
doesn't make it worse than the more efficient model of dictums from
on-high.
    In case anyone is wondering, I'm not even a member of SPI, much less a
representative of it.  So don't take these remarks as coming from SPI.
They're not.

Lynn