Re: Board of Directors Elections 2014 - Candidacy - Oliver Propst

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2014-05-20 at 15:08 +0100, Ekaterina Gerasimova wrote:
> On 20 May 2014 15:00, Karen Sandler <karen gnome org> wrote:
> > Actually, I was able to get most of the way towards the discounted fee for
> > the fist years of WC3 membership when I was Executive Director, but we just
> > didn't have the bandwidth to participate in it. If the new board thinks it's
> > valuable, I can help pick up that conversation (whether I am on the board or
> > not of course).
>
> Thanks for pointing that out! I was not aware that it was concluded
> and would appreciate a summary from you for our minutes so that there
> is a record.

As I recall, aside from the cost, there were a few other reasons we
stopped working on being a W3C member org:

* It wasn't clear if we could put non-employees on working groups as
GNOME representatives. In particular, those non-employees have some
employer somewhere. If that employer is already a member org, they
should be representing their employer. If that employer is a former
member org, the W3C has some restrictions on that.

* When we look at who we'd like to get onto what working groups, we
generally find they're employed by companies like Red Hat and Igalia,
both of which are already member orgs.

* In the case where we have somebody who doesn't work for a conflict of
interest and doesn't work for an existing member org, and we really want
that person on a working group, there is a process of getting "invited
experts" on. I was an invited expert for ITS 2.0 because of my work on
itstool.

I do still think there's value to W3C membership. It sends a message,
and our interests may be better represented than by having people on as
representatives of their employer or as invited experts. But those are
some of the reasons we decided to shelve the discussions.

--
Shaun