[Tinyos-alliance] Comment on the mission, structure and membership

[Robert Szewczyk]

Hi,
 
I'm sorry for the jumbled state of the thoughts below, but here is my take
on the mission, structure and membership.  
 
Mission: 
 
Crucial part of the mission is the producing TinyOS code and interfaces.
>From my point of view the TinyOS needs a bit of a driving cohesive force.
At the moment we have the working groups that provide good technical
directions for the core going forward, but we need some forum that would
bring the 20 different forks of TinyOS together.  The alliance as an
organization could fill multi-faceted role here: it should provide some
TinyOS marketing to promote the advances on the current platform, it can
serve as a trusted forum that  can more effectively nudge people towards
bringing their code bases into compliance with the interfaces and serves as
an outlet for various TinyOS related ideas.  I could see the alliance as
serving as a marketplace for cost effective way of bringing a platform into
compliance with the standard (e.g. company X announces a bounty for bringing
their HW platform into compatibility with the latest interfaces). 
 
One thing I did not see discussed in the emails is the role of the alliance
in conflict resolution within the working groups.  From time to time working
groups will fracture because of internal disputes; sometimes those fractures
occur for personal reasons and at other times there are real technical
differences.  Should the charter of the alliance include an active role in
helping the resolution of these disputes? Does joining the working group
imply the acceptance of this mediation?
 
The other part we discussed was protocol specifications, etc. We could morph
into that over time, but I would rather see particular TinyOS working groups
in charge of defining specifications for a particular problem.  
 
Structure: 
 
I like the idea of two prongs: technical meritocracy and financial-backed
marketing. 
 
Before we embark on the overly elaborate corporate structure, etc.  it would
be useful to see what kind of budget we are working with.  We, as members of
this working group can come up with funds required to set up the corporate
structure that would be prepared to accept members, both individual and
corporate.  I would expect the membership fees to pay for legal advice, and
for the initial staff that would take over Kristin's role.  I like the idea
of a steering committee.  I would like to see the formal alliance to start
with at least some popularly elected members.  (electorat = tinyos-help
list?)
 
This is probably as good a place as any other to propose this idea: one of
the first things we should do on the marketing front should be joining the
ZigBee consortium.  Joining ZigBee would allow us to actually have a branded
ZigBee stack in TinyOS, which in turn would raise the profile of the entire
project in the industrial community.  I would also welcome a reciprocal
membership from the ZigBee consortium. 
 
Membership/participation: 

I think we have a tremendous set of people for this working group.  In the
aliance itself, I would like us to broaden the group to beyond the list of
usual suspects.  We have large companies, besides Intel, that are using
TinyOS: HP andIBM are interesting because they are morphing into more
consulting oriented businesses, and for them TinyOS would be a piece of a
larger solution. I would consider them as the most educated of the potential
TinyOS users.  Startups such as Apprion, Octavetech, and Tendril could also
bring an interesting perspective to the table, particularly as far as the
tools that surround the TinyOS code. 
 
Individual memberships: absolutely crucial for the technical arm of the
alliance.  This area has too many important contributors that might not fall
under a convinient corporate umbrella.  We should remain as open as possible
to accept contributions from people -- companies, students, hobbyists, etc.
The existing structure for admitting people to the developer circle on
SourceForge worked reasonably well.  For me the key question is how do the
individual memberships play out in other contexts of the community.  The
cases I'm concerned about are those where people become individual members
to represent interests of a particular corporation; we can mitigate those
cases by promoting the culture of full disclosure (e.g. when I'm writing
this email I represent my own views but also I do represent Moteiv; it is
also made clear by my sig and email address). 
 
Rob
 
Robert Szewczyk
Moteiv Corporation
 
 
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