[Fwd: Re: GNOME Board update]

[Bart Decrem <bart eazel com>]

Hi everyone,

Nat just gave me his 2c on this and I thought he made a lot of sense, so
I'm taking the liberty to forward to this list.

Bart

Nat writes:

My feeling is that some fee is a good thing, regardless of whether or
not we have a full-time staff member.  I would anticipate that the
administrative needs will be light enough that a staff is unnecessary.
At least, I hope so -- otherwise we might be plunging into more
bureaucracy than would be good. 

But having some cash in the coffers would be useful.  Hackers need
stuff sometimes.  Plus, it's only fair.  Companies that use/depend on
GNOME will reap benefits from being on the advisory board, in terms of
both PR and direct contact with the board of directors.  They should
pay for this, if they can.

As far as an actual structure goes, well, I'd say that the fee should
scale.  One way of doing this is setting a relatively reasonable
requirement, like $15k, and then allowing companies/organizations to
ask the board to take exception for them.  The board could allow
companies to join if they cannot pay, and are making up for it some
other way.  I wanted Debian and the FSF to be excplicit exceptions
from the beginning, as you probably saw in my first proposal.  

It's sort of hard to setup any rigid scale, and it seems to me that
exceptions to that scale will end up arising anyways.

In the end, it's a small point.  Let's just choose something that
doesn't infuriate anyone and go with it.