JoomlaLeaks

The changes they are proposing to make are as follows:

•  Dissolve the Community Oversight Committee (COC). In our project’s current leadership structure, the COC is responsible for adding and removing Open Source Matters (OSM) board members.
•  Form a new board of directors with a new name that would be more easily associated with the Joomla! project than the current name of “Open Source Matters”. The primary responsibilities of the new board of directors would be to set the project’s overall strategy and direction, as well as provide oversight and accountability for all of the project’s newly formed operational committees (see next bullet point below).
•  All of the project’s current teams that operate under the oversight of the Production Leadership Team (PLT), Community Leadership Team (CLT), and OSM would be reorganized into a number of committees. Each of these committees would operate under the oversight of the project’s new board of directors.

 Of course, if you read the other blogs on this website you would draw the conclusion that this entire proposal simply allows the inmates to run the asylum without oversight of any kind. The OSM board as it stands today cannot accomplish the simple tasks of informing its constituency of the responsibilities of any board member, publish financial reports, board minutes, or tax statements as originally promised. They have been seemingly unable to invoice those sponsors who try to sign up and they do not listen or accept feedback from those trying to improve the parts of the system that are obviously broken. And, yet, somehow this reorganization is going to fix all of that? As one poster on the JPeople site put it, they are simply "re-arranging the deck chairs". I am sure you can finish the statement appropriately. I believe strongly that when even the President of OSM doesn't provide input into the discussion, the outcome has been pre-ordained. It is obvious that they don't have the horse and cart configured correctly!

Also, what is wrong with a silo mentality in an Open Source Project like Joomla? After all the focus is on the coding and those that do that well are not interested in the business aspects which is why OSM was set-up to keep those issues away from the the developers. There is absolutely no need to structure this project like a military organization which is essentially how business is structured. What volunteer indivdiual focused on providing his coding expertise wants to operate in a business command and control structure?

Unfortunately, it appears that the current posters on the JPeople feedback site have bypassed those who object to this reorganization and are now completely hung up on relatively minor details as if the proposal is a fait accompli.

They may leave the comment period open for another 6 days (until October 27, 2011), If they do and you feel strongly about this proposal (one way or another), I would suggest posting soon.