Re: steering committee vs foundation

[jg pa dec com (Jim Gettys)]

I think this concern is a bit overblown...

Companies deal with the IETF, which doesn't exist...  And from time to
time, the IETF does make significant decisions and official answers
(e.g. RFC's, and other statements out of the IETF).  At a financial level,
its requirements are truly minimal (and mostly funded out of the registration
fees for IETF meetings, which are cheap as conferences go).

Donations go to the people who actually are doing the work.

The best argument I've seen for a gnome foundation to handle money
have to do with either:
	1) funding documentation development (but arguably, a consortia of
	companies could handle this themselves),
	2) funding small projects or travel requests by developers who
	are from where money and machines are not as flush as the developed
	world.

Money corrupts, and lots of money corrupts absolutely....  Money is like
drugs: you can become dependent on it: then when times get hard (they do
eventually), you face choices you wish you had never to face; in the
case of X, this mess still exists today (though is diminishing as X.org
continues to do nothing perceptible).

What companies do need are: a) a forum to interact with developers in, 
and b) companies need some forum to intact with each other for joint 
marketing of gnome.  a) is needed by Gnome, as it is rapidly getting
into areas where big companies have alot of experience that many/most
individuals working on Gnome software do not, and this input would be
useful..

These two (a+b) should be kept separate in my view. b) has to deal with money, 
possibly quite large, and big company politics, etc, and a) has to deal 
with developers and building great software.  The two do not have remotely 
similar requirements for governance or for money, and mixing them will 
cause trouble.   I'm continually seeing these two different beasts being 
mixed in the discussions.

The technical driving of Gnome should be left in the hands of the
technologists building the great software: leave the marketing and big
company politics elsewhere...  Us big companies know how to do that sort
of stuff.  It is hard enough to figure out how to do the technical goverance
of projects like Gnome and the Internet.

				- Jim

> Sender: foundation-list-admin@gnome.org
> From: Martin Baulig <martin@home-of-linux.org>
> Date: 11 Jul 2000 22:34:33 +0200
> To: Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com>
> Cc: Owen Taylor <otaylor@redhat.com>, bart@eazel.com,
>         foundation-list@gnome.org, Bud Tribble <bud@eazel.com>,
>         Mike Boich <mike@eazel.com>, brian@collab.net, rob@collab.net
> Subject: Re: steering committee vs foundation
> -----
> Havoc Pennington <hp@redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > 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
> 
> It may also be hard for companies which are looking for some legal
> representative of the GNOME project - for instance since they want to
> donnate to the project or want an "official" answer to some question.
> 
> --
> Martin Baulig
> martin@gnome.org (private)
> baulig@suse.de (work)
> 
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--
Jim Gettys
Technology and Corporate Development
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg@pa.dec.com