Topic: Community > Discussion

The LDraw Steering Committee (SteerCo) has been questioned about LDraw.org's policy (as expressed by the Contributor Agreement, other documentation, or tradition) on third parties capitalising on the considerable volunteer time, effort, and ingenuity represented by the part library and the LDraw system?

We know that you would prefer reading about new parts updates announcements instead of politics and bureaucratics, but unfortunately those things also have to be done and decided on in order to ensure the smooth running of LDraw.org.

As you know we have two elected bodies, the Steering Committee (SteerCo) as the overall governing structure and the LDraw Standards Committee (LSC) as the technical standards board charged with discussing, ratifying, and publishing LDraw.org file format specifications. Beside those two groups LDraw is run by other boards like the Content Management, the Helpdesk, the System Administration and last but certainly not least the Parts Tracker Administration. Since they each require specific skills and knowledge and also because they existed long before LDraw was turned into a democratic organization the volunteers occupying those positions never underwent an election and it has been tradition that outgoing members pass over the sceptre of their little kingdom to someone they thought could fill their boots.

The SteerCo has been questioned about the accountability of the "chairs" at LDraw. Are they appointed, elected, etc.? Are those positions sandboxes to play with "until I‘m bored with it?; a job for life", or is the site the community‘s window to the world? If these volunteers, the PT admins or the helpdesker do a bad job, is there a way for the community to "fire" them? A highly delicate issue as you can imagine.

As we move forward on the Contributor Agreement for the Parts Library it is important that we have community input. This LUGNET thread has been created in order to discuss some of these issues and it would be appreciated if people took the time to read it and to comment if they feel the need.