Board meeting minutes - was (Re: A question for the candidates)

[Frederic Muller <fredm gnome org>]

On 05/28/2012 07:29 AM, Tobias Mueller wrote:
> ne doesn't know what is happening and thus
> being able to take influence. So I would try to have the minutes sent
> around ASAP. But as far as I could see, nobody was suffering enough yet
> to publicly ask whether it'd be possible to make things more (timely)
> public.

Again I guess we were spoiled by former board secretary in the previous 
years who was automatically emailing the meeting notes 2 weeks after the 
meeting. This year (2011-2012) minutes were published as follows:
- Meeting of July 26, 2011 -> publish on August 23rd : 1 month later
- Meeting of August 9th, 2011 -> published on October 18th: 2+ month 
later (publish together with 4 other meeting minutes).

I personally even thought meetings were not happening anymore and 
considering the reactions I get when asking questions to the board I 
have just given up on asking for the time being. Note that I feel 
sending minutes is a board problem and not necessarily the secretary 
alone. I believe in getting things done rather than blaming individuals.

One question was eventually asked when getting those minutes and the 
answer was "_topic_in_question_ should be marked as private" - again a 
typical "sorry we can't tell you" answer which I got quite often during 
public foundation IRC meetings.

So at this stage you may start to understand why some members of the 
community feel that somehow "the Board of Directors is a bit divorced 
from the rest of the GNOME project" whereas GNOME project can mean its 
own community. Your mileage may vary.

Meeting minutes seems crucial to run a public discussion between the 
board and its members as Germán has highlighted and it's not because no 
one asked that no one thought it was not important anymore.

I will just quote Randy Pausch from his last lecture to conclude (Randy 
Pausch style, not mine):
"When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that 
means they've given up on you."

Maybe that's something that both the current and new board should think 
about.

Fred