Re: Foundation summary

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Mike Kestner <mkestner@ameritech.net> writes:
> provide such resources.  Is this something that needs a board plus a
> corporate advisory panel to carry out?    
>

I think it needs someone who can officially decide where the money
goes. So, that will be the board in our proposal. The alternative
would be to have a vote with all the members every time we want to buy
a disk drive or something, and that seems a little silly.

The advisory panel is not something hackers are going to need to care
about. Its function is to let organization say "I am supporting
GNOME" and make a press release about that, and to let companies talk
to one another. Also it will give the board or membership a way to
contact all the GNOME-interested organizations if they want to ask
them about something as a group. The current proposal puts Debian, the
FSF, and other nonprofit groups on the panel in addition to companies.
  
> > The foundation lets the community get in on this process, because we
> > can have community members on the board, and the board can talk to
> > companies. It's better than the current situation; at least your
> > representatives will be elected.
> 
> As opposed to entitled, based on the piles of righteous code or chapters
> of riveting documentation they've contributed?    
>

The problem is that we have hundreds of people who are entitled, and
we need a way to choose 9-15 of them. The fairest way is likely to
hold a vote of the members (the membership is the set of all
contributors) to choose people to be on the board.  Since we have
dozens of people who make massive contributions, members can consider
other things when they vote, such as getting representatives from many
sides of the project or different countries, or choosing the hackers
with the best "people skills."
 
> Companies like talking to companies.  They have a mutual interest:
> making money.  I don't believe this is a primary motivator of the GNOME
> community at large.  
>

Of course not, but we can work together with companies. Companies do
want to talk to "GNOME Project representatives" we've found.
  
> > The steering committee IMO has done a lot of good to improve
> > communication and coordination. The foundation's board won't be any
> > better than the steering committee, but it will be elected, which will
> > hopefully make people feel a lot better about it.
> 
> Who are these people who need to feel better, and why are they whining
> about direction being set by some of the core contributors of the
> project?  
>

Right, the current authority of the committee stems from who is on it
(and many of the core people who aren't on it helped choose it). But
as Maciej said, everyone will get a warmer, fuzzier feeling if we
elect the committee. And long-term we do need to rotate the committee
membership, and that promises to be a mess without some kind of
procedure.

Havoc