gistfile1.txt

Not a motion as in an official LLG motion, surely not. Didn't mean to imply
that, if that's the meaning you took.

I have a problem with dismissing Facebook and IRC out of hand, because that's a
large portion of the Lojban-speaking community. And if nothing else, the
present "unofficial community motion" (or whatever it should be called), and
the amount of support it's seen, including from some LLG members, has shown
that there is a lot of will among Lojban speakers for things to move forward.

I admit to not really knowing what's been going on in the LLG recently (in fact
I can't be the only one who wasn't even aware the meeting was going on). Part
of this is the minutes not being published of course.

Anyway a few things are clear. Everyone wants a bright future for Lojban, and
agrees that there is work to do to make the language specification adequate.
That is the BPFK's responsibility, but the BPFK has been stalled for a long
time (and some have pointed to the existing mechanisms, but they are
demonstrably not working). Maybe it is time to change the structure, not in
order to change the ideals, but in order to get things moving faster towards
those ideals.

Some people have said, what exactly are we proposing here? It's a good
question. To put it one way, we're simply trying to coalesce around selpa'i and
unstick the development of Lojban from the current gridlock. But that raises
the question of how? Obviously, it's not completely settled. Dustin mentioned
the open source software model before. So here's an outline, in broad strokes,
of what could be:

- A new committee takes on the task of finishing the language documentation,
  and discussing + approving/rejecting (by vote or consensus) any further
  change proposals.
- We put selpa'i at the head of this committee. Someone needs to have the power
  to resolve disputes and selpa'i/Miles has the will and skill to do it (oops,
  didn't mean to rhyme there). Of course, someone chosen by the community can
  always be removed by the same community in the unlikely event that they fail
  to do a good job.
- The language development is organized as much as possible like a software
  project. There's an issue tracker so that discussions can be had about
  multiple issues at the same time, yet in an organized fashion, and the
  important bits (definitions, grammar rules, etc) are in a repository. Using
  some kind of source control (Github? eh?) will give us a lot of advantages
  including easily viewable history, and ways to branch off separate work items
  and merge them back later. (Of course we can argue about specific
  technologies and bikesheds later.)
- Everyone is encouraged to contribute to the language documentation and
  development. Contributions have to be approved the aforementioned committee.
  Membership on the committee would be decided by the commitee (ultimately by
  selpa'i, I guess) based on the strength of one's contributions and
  demonstrated skill in Lojban.

The idea is to keep bureacracy to an absolute minimum, but to provide a
platform and organizational process that will work (better than the BPFK has
worked thus far) to move Lojban forward.


So, to conclude, there seem to be plenty of people who want progress and some
inertia behind it. I've presented one possible model. What's the best way to
work with the LLG so that such a thing can be considered?