Re: Fwd: Draft of Proposal for the GNOME Foundation.

[Nat Friedman <nat helixcode com>]

My tail's between my legs.  I wasn't trying to expose the foundation
list like that.  I didn't know all the details.  I screwed up your
whole delicate semi-private thing that you so painstakingly
established.  I'm sorry.

But I *am* glad that I sent out that stuff to the public lists,
because I do want to know what people might have to say about it.  And
if I weren't privy to these discussions, and I were a GNOME developer,
and suddenly some group came to me with some wording etched on stone
tablets, I'd be pretty pissed!  So I think it's good that the
discussions are public.

I guess it was announced on gnome-hackers, but some people didn't seem
to know about it.  tigert was telling me that he was pretty surprised
to hear about the whole thing.  And I'm not proposing that 1,000 eager
15 year olds protoGNOMErs jump onto a mailing list and try to hash our
a structure for the foundation -- I just think we should let everyone
see what's going on.

And I don't think that exposing the text itself hurt anything.

Nat

Owen Taylor <otaylor@redhat.com> writes:

> Nat, 
> 
> The foundation-list was carefully chosen to be semi-public - open
> subscription but not announced to the world. That setup was meant
> to provide a maximum balance betweeen noise and the abilility
> for a large number of people to join.
> 
> Because you posted a message strongly implying its existence
> to gnome-list@gnome.org, we've had change it to hold subscriptions
> for approval. Which, if nothing else, is going to slow down
> the speed at which people can join, and create tons of work
> for Havoc, who is going to have to go through the list.
> 
> Nat Friedman <nat@helixcode.com> writes:
> 
> > [ Owen, excuse me for Cc'ing this to foundation-list, but I have a
> >   feeling I'm going to be answering this question a lot today. ]
> > 
> > Owen,
> > 
> > I have not made this into a public discussion.  The foundation-list
> > still exists, the steering committee is still solely vested with the
> > authorization to form and transition to the new foundation, and all of
> > the meaty discussions can still be as private as you want.
> > 
> > What I have done is written a document and asked for public comment.
> > I don't see what's wrong with this.  You are free to ignore what I
> > wrote and the way people respond to it.  You're free to continue the
> > private discussion.
> 
> There is nothing wrong about public discussion, but keeping
> things reasonably quiet until the gnome-hackers membership
> can come to some rough conclusion about how things will
> work would be the action of any reasonable person who wanted
> to minimize confusion and possible adverse publicity.
>  
> > And what, exactly, is wrong with soliciting public comment?  This
> > foundation is going to govern a lot of these people, or their work at
> > least.  Why is it wrong to let them know what's going on, and ask them
> > for their opinion?
> > 
> > I think what is a little bit sinister is closed-door discussions
> > without any potential for participation -- or even observation! --
> > from the project at large.
> 
> foundation-list was announced on gnome-hackers. gnome-hackers
> is a very good representation of the project at large.
> 
> Regards,
>                                         Owen
> 
> > Owen Taylor <otaylor@redhat.com> writes:
> > 
> > > What?
> > > 
> > > Even if you think this should be public you simply cannot
> > > unilateraly make this a public discussion.
> > > 
> > > I am highly upset by this,