Re: foundation application..

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

This policy came about after I encouraged interns who were 2/3rd of the way through their internship in 2012 to apply for the Foundation membership. The membership committee preferred that interns have a chance to figure out their level of participation in GNOME after the internship before applying and, as a rule, wanted to see non-trivial contributions for a period longer than 6 months. 

The intention of having this statement in the internship wrap-up e-mail is to tell interns about the foundation membership and encourage them to apply at an appropriate point.

Thanks for clarifying how the decision was arrived at. The issue in that defining an appropriate point essentially redefines membership illegibility, as the bylaws define it already. That is, unless it is generally agreed that all interns do make trivial contributions, (which I don't believe is the case here).

I think some guidelines there are preferable to not mentioning the foundation membership to interns at all.

Guidelines are helpful, but not those which could mislead contributors into believing they are not eligible for membership. In that case, it does seem preferable to not mention anything, at all. With that said, I don't think this has to be a case of having to choose between two "evils".

 

I believe most interns make non-trivial contributions during their internship, but because the membership committee has further discretion about the expectations for the membership applications, we need to figure out how to communicate these in future e-mails in a way that is encouraging and relates the case-by-case provision of the bylaws.

Ideally everyone could be provided with easy access to clear guidance on the rules laid out by the bylaws on foundation membership illegibility, as well as information on how the process of applying works, which I believe is already covered on the foundation membership pages.[1] The information on those pages should be enough to help contributors decide whether to apply, if eligible contributors are still not applying enough (for whatever reason), then we'd probably need to either figure out how to improve the information by figuring out what is missing (e.g. could we be providing examples of what a typical accepted application might look like, or further information on when an eligible contributor stops being a eligible contributor?) or it may just be a case of improving how that information is delivered (i.e. whether it is accessible enough). A link to membership guidance could be provided to contributors to encourage them to explore the idea of applying for membership, for example.

Thanks,

Magdalen

[1] http://www.gnome.org/foundation/membership/apply/