Re: steering committee vs foundation

[Bart Decrem <bart eazel com>]

I understand your concern and I would also prefer it if we could have one
entity instead of two.

However,

1- there seemed to be consensus in yesterday's discussion that we want to
keep the technical and marketing functions separate
2- we need a forum for corporations to get involved and that doesn't
really jive with the elections idea.
3- although those of us who live in the US don't seem to have a problem
with a legal structure centered here, our friends on other continents
feel differently about this.

The foundation does provide the legal umbrella that our corporate
partners require.  Since the corporate members will most likely provide
the bulk of the funds, I don't think it's so unreasonable that they would
have a say in how those funds get allocated.  But the board would be a
balance between hackers and corporate reps.

But yes, having two bodies means extra overhead and that's suboptimal.  I
don't see another way though.

Bart


Havoc Pennington wrote:

> After talking to Owen, I agree there are some concerns:
>
>  - the board and committee will have a lot of overlap, leading to more
>    work for people
>  - if the foundation doesn't have membership and voting, then it's
>    hard for it to be the legitimate handler-of-money on behalf
>    of GNOME
>  - incorporating in the US doesn't seem to have any actual impact
>    on the international nature of GNOME, since the board and members
>    are still international
>
> Havoc
>
>
>
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