Changes Needed To Charter

From Genunix

The current OpenSolaris Charter appears to need revision in the following areas:

Communication with Sun

2.5. The intended methods of communication between the OGB and Sun.

The first to modify Section 2.5, about formal communications with Sun. There's a place for formal communications, and Sun has established a liaison person (currently Vincent) through whom "official" statements can be made. In practice we've found that attempting to funnel all "official" communication through the OGB leads at best to delay and at worst to confrontation and the impression that "the workers " can make demands of "the management" through such a channel. A revised section 2.5 needs to describe the reality we've encountered - that all community members are free to interact with Sun as appropriate and that Sun will appoint an official liaison to the OGB. It's not up to the OGB to define that as it can't tell Sun what to do. Hence Charter not Constitution.

Statement of Purpose

The second is the area around "purpose". The Charter (in section 6) clearly states that the OGB has no role to play in the licensing of copyrights, trademarks or patents, yet as has pointed out elsewhere the current Constitution could be interpreted in section 2 as trying to make assertions in that area. That the statement in section 2 is not normative since the charter makes it clear it can't be, but for the sake of clarity it should probably be moved to the Charter so that it's clear that OpenSolaris is and will always remain open source. Sun needs to say that; there's no statement or action any OGB can make that would make it so. Hence Charter not Constitution.