Re: Candidacy (Tim Ney)

[rms39 columbia edu (Russell Steinthal)]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2001 10:56:56 PST, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>On 13Nov2001 06:44PM (+0100), Christian Schaller wrote:
>>
>> Personally I would like to suggest that the foundation impose the
>> following policy:
>> 
>> * No employee of the GNOME Foundation as represented by the GNOME
>> Foundation board can be elected to the board. 
>> 
>> * The Director of the GNOME Foundation (which currently is Tim Ney) gets
>> a non-voting place on the board.
>
>Hi Christian,
>
>It's actually quite common in both for-profit corporations and
>non-profit organizations for executives of the organization to also be
>on the board of directors.

[snip]
>Also, to specifically address the issue of Tim's employment status,
>Bart suggested that the board form an employment committee which does
>not include Tim. I think this is a good idea, and it's analogous to
>the way these issues are handled by other corporate and nonprofit
>boards.

And it may even be legally required, but that's a question for the 
lawyers.  Suffice it to say, this isn't unprecedented, and there are 
well-established legal rules for dealing with conflicts of interest 
among directors who have financial interests in a corporation's 
decisions, whether because of employment or any other reason.  I'll 
leave the details and ensuring that all of the Board members know 
about (and follow) them to the Foundation's legal counsel.

-Russell

Disclaimers:

(1) This is not legal advice.  For that, you need to talk to an 
attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.

(2) This is not in any way related to my position on the Membership & 
Elections Committee.  For that, look for the messages with the very 
long signature blocks. :)


-- 
Russell Steinthal		Columbia Law School, Class of 2002
<rms39 columbia edu>		Columbia College, Class of 1999
<steintr nj org>		UNIX System Administrator, nj.org