[sakai2-tcc] Planning for Sakai 2.10 and beyond

[Seth Theriault]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 10:57 AM, Charles Severance <csev at umich.edu> wrote:

> I think that for the past two years, the TCC operated too far under the
> radar - because OAE was the "golden child" and everyone wanted to give the
> OAE its best chance of success.

I would agree (especially since I was part of the "under the radar"
problem as a TCC chair), but I think it was a natural evolution if you
understand the historical context.

The TCC formed itself in 2010 in Denver out of absolute necessity: The
CLE's death had been prominently announced for some time from the
highest levels, the road to "Sakai 3" for all was paved with a new
vision of product management, and new structures were put in place to
support this. For the CLE to survive, it needed a way to work to make
decisions -- mostly technical at the time -- and basically work around
these new structures, of which many who worked directly on the CLE had
a dim view.

We could have called ourselves a PMC, but we didn't for political
reasons. The "Technical" part of the name was specifically chosen to
avoid the *appearance* of encroachment on the "product" structures. I
and others had to essentially sell this to the various constituencies,
including the Board at the time. Some astute members of these
constituencies quickly recognized the future reality: The TCC is
effectively steering the CLE. We worked with the structures briefly,
which mostly went away quickly on their own.

Now, over the last two years, the TCC has had to learn to live with
resource constraints. Indeed, the 2.9 release suffered greatly because
of the decrease in centrally funded support for CLE release, QA, and
testing. Although those have recovered a bit, significant
contributions for 2.9 have come from other places in the community,
something that must expand and continue for the CLE to continue.

I doubt you will see a marketing campaign from the TCC, but we can be
better about engaging the community. This means more frequent updates,
presentations at regional events, and face-to-face meetings as
possible. In the future, the CLE will also need to work out a better
funding model, one that suits it and is informed by the mistakes of
the past.

Seth