David said:

> Forgive me for not watching very closely, but how did Tech
> Group / Johnathan Backus et.al. come to be the organizing
> authority.

As I see it, nobody else volunteered, so Jon took the initiative...
If he would not have done it, possibly nobody else would have...

> Or perhaps Mr. Backus was behind the formalization of
> OpenMPE from the start, and I just wasn't paying attention.

While Jon put in the time to do the initial "mechanics" of getting
OpenMPE set up, IMO it would not have happened without active
interest by a lot of other people....


Dale suggested having BOD candidates expand their bios to
include more on their vision of the future.  I agree that might have
been a good thing to do, but given we are already in the middle of
the 48-hour window that the polls were advertised to be open, as
a practical matter doing this now would I think mean suspending
the current ballot and starting over in a week or so;  i.e.:  Given
world-wide schedules and the press of "real work", I doubt that all
bios could be updated before the current window closes....  And
changing some but not all while the polls are open is probably not
proper in any case.....


WRT comments about better ways to conduct the vote:  As
someone who has been involved with SIGImage/SQL and Interex
SIB ballots for many years, and given (IMHO) the urgency of
getting *something* going, I have to respectfully say that my
sympathies are with Jon in this:  It took Interex years to decide
whether a "member" was a company or an individual (after much
discussion end result was "individual").  While you may agree or
disagree with the method Jon chose being the "best", I don't think
it can reasonably be considered unfair.  And given that (again
IMO) time is of the essence in this matter, I think that getting
*something* going soon is better than taking a lot of time to argue
about incremental improvements in the ballot process;  i.e.:  The
Titanic is rapidly approaching the moment of impact with the
iceberg;  better to focus on changing course in time than to argue
about the arrangement of the deck chairs in first class...

If you think I'm being somewhat overly dramatic, note comments
that have already appeared on 3000-L and / or OpenMPE lists;
about sites with large, complex in-house systems needing to make
a decision within a couple months about abandoning MPE or trying
to hang in there for a while. IMO overriding priority is to collectively
convince HP they need to publicly express ASAP their willingness
to facilitate or at the very least not obstruct MPE having a future
beyond October 2003 and end of 2006.  If "critical mass" is lost,
everything else will be permanently OBE....

If OpenMPE, Inc. does not reflect and pursue policies that have
wide support among the current user community, it's not going to
go anywhere in any case.  Fundamentally the users *are* (or will
be) the company....

Ken Sletten

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