Re: steering committee vs foundation

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Martin Baulig <martin@home-of-linux.org> writes: 
> 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.
>

For GNOME-wide decisions, this is the correct thing, because the
membership and steering committee are already international; all the
international foundation members should be members of the main
foundation, and some international representatives will likely be on
the steering committee.

The regional foundations would just decide on regional issues, not
GNOME-wide issues. Of course if the committee ever had questions about
German shows, they'd ask the German GNOME people, they wouldn't just
make something up.
 
> Sure, but there also other things to decide on rather than just when
> the next release is being made - for instance marketing stuff.
>

If it's a regional decision, done with regional money, then it would
be decided by the regional foundation. If it's a GNOME-wide decision,
then the main foundation has a fully international membership, and
should be making that decision.
 
> 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.
> 

I think it's better to just elect a slate of board members, who may be
associated with companies or regional foundations. If we look at
representing regional foundations on the board, and companies on the
board, and everyone else on the board, the board will be too big to do
anything. 9 is a good number. 11 maybe. 13 is too big. There are many
more than 13 countries in the world.

Surely if people vote on a slate for the committee, they aren't going
to like an all-US slate.

Havoc