Re: steering committee vs foundation

[Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org>]

Bart Decrem <bart@eazel.com> writes:

> Yes, that's exactly the idea.  A group of people in Europe are already
> working on a Gnome Foundation Europe.
> 
> But rather than putting reps from those foundations on the Steering
> Committee - I would do the opposite: putting one or more person from
> the Steering Committee on the board of the Gnome foundations so we
> have a liaison.

This sounds good, but I'm a little bit concerned that the Steering
Committee will just report decisions which have already been made to
the regional foundations rather than asking them.

> That also addresses Alan's point (I think): the Steering Committee is
> the body that acts as the forum for coordinating releases etc., NOT
> any of those foundations.

Sure, but there also other things to decide on rather than just when
the next release is being made - for instance marketing stuff.

One important thing which we need to do is to decide on which conferences
we go, which press release we'll make there, how much money we'll spend
on which conference and so on.

For this kind of thing, I think it's important to have a representative
of each of the regional foundations on the board since they best know
about the situation in their region, which conferences are important etc.

When GNOME becomes more popular in Europe, we may also get more European
companies invest in GNOME, etc.

However, I like your idea of having one or more persons from the Steering
Committee on the boards of the regional GNOME foundation - and we may
combine this with my idea.

I mean, when each of the regional foundations sends a representative to
the board, this person can also act as a representative of the board in
his regional foundation.

-- 
Martin Baulig
martin@gnome.org (private)
baulig@suse.de (work)