Re: some issues about membership

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

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

> Bart Decrem <bart@eazel.com> writes:
> 
> > 2.  We should elect a board of directors after LWE.  We are trying to
> > move too fast.  First we should complete the work on the charter of the
> > foundation, then we create the foundation legally, then we hold
> > elections.  This will also give us more time to make sure we have a clean
> > membership list and we can figure out the election logistics better.
> > We'll also have more time to put together a slate.   If we are filing
> > legal papers and need to have a board of directors now, we can just make
> > that the current Steering Committee, and they will be replaced by the
> > elected board of directors.   Maciej has expressed this opinion most
> > forcefully.
> 
> We already have the problem that people don't like the Steering Committee
> and the way decisions are made in the GNOME project because the steercom
> basically has all the power right now without being elected.

I would like to see this problem solved even more than you, but for a
somewhat opposite reason - it's hard for steercom to decide anything
because it doesn't have any kind of real valid mandate.

> So just moving over the steercom is a non-issue here and we'll offend
> even more people with it.
> 
> We need to do a real vote and there need to be more than one slate.
> 

More people voting doesn't necessarily mean better representation. We
don't even have all the people who were at the original meeting to
form the steering committee on the membership rolls now. 

I have also talked to some people that I consider important GNOME
contributors and they've expressed active disinterest in joining the
foundation as currently constituted for various reasons.

It's more important to get this foundation right than to do it fast,
so we shouldn't rush this to meet some arbitrary deadline. If all we
can announce at LWE is that we are in the process of forming the
foundation, then I think we should be prepared to live with that.

 - Maciej