Re: should candidates be foundation members.

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Christian Schaller <uraeus linuxrising org> writes:

> Another issue I think needs to be discussed however is company
> representation. Both from seeing Miguel mail regarding his choice for
> candidates and Maciej's candidacy mail, it struck me that being able to
> represent companies was used as an argument. Personally I feel we should
> try to keep company interests out of these elections since if we start
> to choose the board based on company affiliations I feel we undermine
> the position of the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board and also the company
> independence of the GNOME Foundation board.
> 
> Personally I feel that it should be made very clear that when people
> like Miguel and Maciej are elected to the board, which I think both of
> them should be, it is
> because if their contributions and positions in the GNOME community not
> as representatives of their companies.
>

Christian,

I agree that probably corporate affiliation alone should not be enough
to elect someone. And indeed, it may not be a point in favor.

But I also think it's a relevant point. Some people may want to vote
against me because of my affiliation with Eazel, to avoid corporations
having too much power or because they want to see more non-affiliated
people on the board. Others may think that it's an advantage that I am
in close touch with people at Eazel on a technical level, since that
means immediate communication between the developers and the board,
without layers of management in between. So I wanted to make people
aware of this affilitation and tell them what I thought it meant in
terms of my ability to be useful on the board.

For the record, I intend to bring Eazel's point of view to the board,
but vote my personal conscience, to promote what I see as the best
interests of GNOME, and to recuse myself from issues where I see a
conflict of interest. So while I think I can represent Eazel, I don't
intend or want to be "the Eazel representative".

I tend to think it's good to have some people from Eazel on the board,
given the total level of our hacking involvement, but not too many,
and I hope people will vote that way. I feel the same way about other
companies that are involved in GNOME.

I also think that "not affiliated with any GNOME company" or
"affiliated with several in various ways" should count as strong
points in favor of a candidate.

The issues that you raise about the advisory board vs. the foundation
board are interesting though. It would be good if each advisory board
member organization picked a specific advisory board
representative. But we can figure out the details of that after the
board election.

 - Maciej