Corporate Stuff

[Ali Abdin <aliabdin aucegypt edu>]

I would like to extend on Nat's proposed idea to limit the 'corporate
dominance' of GNOME. Personally, I think it would be a good amendmum to Nat's
proposal to limit TOTAL corporate membership of the 'board' to less than 50%.

Nat's idea was no ONE company have over 50% membership on the board. But lets
look at the issue. That way GNOME can never be controlled or dominated by any
'combination' of companies (lets say Eazel + Helix have some sort of corporate
alliance and managed to always get 51% of the vote).

Somebody on IRC (DV - IIRC) mentioned that a problem could be the "buying" of
elected members, but I don't see that as an issue if the board members are
ELECTED (note: they are elected by GNOME developers not the general GNOME
users population).

Miguel said something along the lines that this could cause an issue of
politics and popularity contests on #gnome. I don't agree with this, since the
GNOME developers would be voting, and I trust them to be able to form a
responsible decision.

The only issue I see with this is that many GNOME developers (especially the
'core' ones) are affiliated with GNOME-related corporations. I also think it
would be pretty difficult (if not impossible) to have individual members as
board members while they are affiliated with GNOME-related companies (i.e. if
Jacob Berkman (for example) is on the board, and he votes in favor of Helix's
stance, people will not see it as an 'objective' opinion).

Anyway - it could also be possible that one of the foundation goals would be
to someday be able to hire/pay individual board members (so they never become
part of corporate entities).

The reason I write this is because miguel told me to mail it to the list for
discussion (instead of just telling him on IRC).

Feel free to tear my opinions down,
Ali Abdin