clarification and apology [was Re: board]

["Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org>]

On Nov 2, 2007 7:43 PM, Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org> wrote:
> <quote who="Luis Villa">
>
> > I volunteered to take leadership on this position months ago.
>
> We chose to have a Board member as liaison to the Legal team, which was very
> clearly delegated the responsibility to provide legal support and advice to
> the Foundation. This is the same model as other teams, but as the legal team
> is new and doesn't have a well-defined leadership/sustainability model (as,
> say, the release team does), it could do with a lot more shepherding. It was
> only clear to us very recently that the current liaison was not doing this
> effectively. The only reason it became clear to us is that our own goals
> were not being met, not as a result of feedback from the legal team itself.

After talking with Jeff some last night, I'd like to clarify this
exchange a bit, and offer some apologies for the impression I may have
created about the current board.

Since March of this year, I've been trying to help out on a variety of
miscellaneous Foundation-related legal projects- some important, some
not so much. All of these projects, for various reasons, stalled. When
I came back up to speed, I tried to revive them, but got blocked on
the two new legal-lists- in each case, I asked for status or for more
information, and got little information, or worse, complete silence.
As most of you know this is incredibly demotivating for a volunteer.

I thought that several board members were subscribed to these lists,
so I thought that my requests for information were being heard by (and
ignored by) the entire board. [I sincerely believed that I had checked
the membership lists; unless they've changed, I apparently did not.]
This frustrated me a great deal, and some of that has shown through in
the emails I sent to this list and to the board last week.

This was actually not the case. Very few board members were on the
lists, and the board expected the board's delegates to serve as a
conduit for this type of information. Unfortunately, for whatever
reasons, this did not happen, so the board as a whole was unaware of
my unanswered pings, and did not deserve some of the negative energy I
channeled in their direction.

To the extent I impugned the entire board last week, I deeply and
sincerely apologize; I let my frustration get the better of me and
failed to understand the complete picture. This was hurtful to some
old friends, and that particularly bothers me- I hope they will
understand where I was coming from and accept my apology, and
hopefully work with me to make sure that stalls like this one don't
happen again (at least on legal issues.)

As part of that, I am still very interested in being the board's point
person on legal issues for the next 18 months, and I still believe
that the best way to do that is to be elected. The dead air that
frustrated me as a volunteer, and which caused this unpleasant
episode, will not be a problem when I'm on the board, if there is
anything under the sun I can do to help it.

Thanks-
Luis