True, but at the same time it is very difficult to voice a concern without it sounding as negative criticism.
I think there are two main reasons why this kind of heated discussions keep popping up:
- It’s not clear what exactly are the goals of the OSRF,
- There’s no community interaction on those goals; i.e. there hasn’t been a community debate on what would be the ideal direction for the OSRF, neither before nor after the Intrinsic deal.
As far as I know, the OSRF currently has two employees, one CEO and one CTO.
I think it is important to recognize that these people are in a unique position, as they are the only ones that are independently funded to spend 100% of their time on the strategic direction ROS/Gazebo/Open-RMF is heading.
The primary responsibility of a CEO is:
- To formulate a mission statement,
- To formulate a strategic plan to reach those long term goals,
- To ensure that the necessary funding is secured to realize the plan, and
- To hire the key people to do it.
I tried to find the mission statement of the OSRF.
If you scroll down here you will find a mission statement, but it is too vague to be actionable. Neither did I find any statements on this discourse or through google about the goals of the OSRF (or the progress it is making towards its goals) by @Vanessa_Yamzon_Orsi.
Based on this post by @gbiggs, it seems that the targets of the OSRF are “ownership and organisation”. I did not find further clarification about what exactly is meant with ‘ownership’ and ‘organisation’.
Actionable suggestion 1:
I think it would be beneficial if the OSRF could be clear on its goals and the progress towards those goals.
If the OSRF does not communicate its goals, people tend to invent goals and then are either happy or frustrated depending on whether the outcome of the OSRF actions corresponds to their expectations or not.
Actionable suggestion 2:
I also think it would be beneficial to have some sort of open discussion about this.
I think this is important in a regular company setting, and only more so for a community project.
Then wrt. the CTO role:
The main responsibility of a CTO is:
- To ensure that the the strategic plan is translated into actionable short- and mid-term projects,
- To ensure that formal (written!) specifications are drawn up for each of those projects,
- To set priorities and establish a time schedule (obviously in a volunteering-based setting, the schedule is a ‘whish list’ rather than enforcable), and
- To ensure that all developments conform to the specifications.
“Ensure” means that the CTO does not necessarily have to so this work himself, but that the CTO holds final responsibility for all developments.
Based on this post, I conclude that @gbiggs has a very different interpretation of his role.
Fair enough, but what exactly is the role of the CTO of the OSRF then?
Moreover, without a clear mission statement, how can a CTO do his job?
Actionable suggestion 3:
I think it would be beneficial if the OSRF could clarify the role of the CTO and how it interpretes the technical leadership aspect of that role.
Imo. as long as there is no settled and accepted consensus on this, we will see remarks such as “The OSRF should take ownership of documentation.” every few months.