Hello everybody,

There have been a lot of discussions in this group on various topics, some
have led to new features in Firebird, some have been decided as wrong.
However all our discussions look more like a talks in a bar than like a
meetings of the architects (as name of the group suggests) - we have
discussed an issue and that's all. Any new person that joins the group has
no idea of what has been discussed and what have been decided (reading
thousands of emails is not a solution). After some time we also forget the
outcome of the discussion or some important points that were made during it.

Therefore I suggest to finish each discussion round with a "minutes". It
should include following information:

- topic of the discussion;
- short summary of the problem we're going to solve;
- proposed solution;
- short summary of the critics/alternatives suggested;
- conclusion.

The last part is most hard, since not every discussion ends with a
conclusion. However I suggest that in case when no conclusion has been made
during discussion, the person writing a minutes suggest one. If the group
does not agree to the suggested conclusion, we just start working together
on this issue.

Minutes should be either published in files area of this group or somewhere
on the Firebird site.

Now probably the most important question: who is going to write the minutes?
There's two possibilities: a dedicated person and a discussion originator. I
believe that a dedicated secretary is better approach.

If you have an interest to be a secretary, please contact somebody from the
Firebird admins off the list to discuss the details.

Thanks!
Roman Rokytskyy