Re: foundation application..

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

>> One of the main requirements of gaining
>> Foundation Membership is being active within the community for a
>> little while *after* the internship has ended to demonstrate the fact
>> there's a real interest staying around and contributing to the
>> Project.
>
>
> This is a practice which completely contradicts the bylaws definition a
> contributor who is eligible for membership.
>
>  * All contributors have made a significant contribution (BYLAW)
>
>  * All contributors are eligible for membership (BYLAW)
>
>  * Some interns have made a significant contribution over their internship
>
>  * No interns are eligible for membership
>
> This does not make sense.

As Germán correctly pointed out the Bylaws were written before any
internship program ever started within the GNOME Project.

And as I correctly pointed out ;-), this does not make any difference. The bylaws were last amended in 2012. Requesting an amendment to the bylaws takes 21 days to process once the BoD (or the person requesting it) have published the request on the foundation list so that the responses can be tallied. 

While the Bylaws define what the main requirements for gaining Foundation
Membership are they also mention "Membership will be determined on a
case-by-case basis, at the sole discretion of the Board and
Membership Committee" (Article VI, section 6.1). So what we have here
is a set of requirements the Bylaws strictly require the applicant to
possess for the membership to be actually granted while leaving the
Membership Committee the required discretion to process a certain
application. This leaves me out with one main question: how far can
the Committee go when reviewing a certain application? can the
Committee introduce additional "requirements" (during one of its
meetings and with a regular vote) for a membership to be accepted in
absence of particular references on the Bylaws themselves (like in the
case of interns or GSoC students for example)?

It's clear the Bylaws probably need an update on this side and ideally
part of the "what to do in case the Bylaws do not mention how peculiar
cases (such as interns) should be handled" should be delegated to the
Committee that should come up with a set of policy and guidelines
widely accepted by the membership. I'll make sure the following item
will be discussed on the next or future Board meetings.

>> The rationale behind this decision is mainly related to the
>> fact a good number of interns stopped contributing right after their
>> internship ended and it was clear to us their intent wasn't sticking
>> around the community nor they probably were passionate about our
>> project to justify staying around some more. We found extending the
>> contributions period (usually one or two months) for interns the best
>> solution to build a membership base made of people who really love and
>> care deeply about the project and the values it promotes.
>
>
> The bylaws do not say anything about a contribution period (and I had not
> heard of it before myself either, to be honest). However, they do explicitly
> state that individuals who should get credit for their contributions (not
> the corporations who pay them), the same as ordinary volunteers might.
> Either sponsored contributions are as valuable as ones that aren't
> sponsored, or they aren't: The bylaws say that they are... If there is an
> exception being made in the case of some interns then that seems quite
> significant.
>
> The bylaws do not say anything about what might motivate contributors to
> contribute, nor their level of commitment to GNOME, when it defines a
> "contributor" in terms of foundation membership but it does fairly clearly
> describe about what a "contributor" is. The main thing that is unclear in
> the bylaws is what defines a "non-trivial contribution" really and this
> becomes even more confusing because the practice is to state that all
> interns who make contribution from 40 hour weeks over a period of 3 months
> are not eligible until they contribute more stuff.

Stating the fact interns contributions aren't enough for them to join
the GNOME Foundation is out of discussion here. It's clear their
contributions are non-trivial enough for the Membership Committee to
grant the membership right after checking all the references listed on
the application. When an internship comes to an end I can think of two
possible natural consequences: one being the person applying for
membership and the other being the intern leaving the project and
moving to something else. The rationale behind choosing any of the
above consequences is strictly subjective to the individual. There
might be interns who never heard of what a FOSS project aimed to and
what it was about before joining OPW and at the end of the journey the
values of freedom we pursue were shared by the intern itself. Or there
might be interns who weren't attracted by the FOSS movement, by GNOME
or its eco-system and decided to step back and leave the project.

The two months (seems there was some fuss between the six and the two
months period, I can confirm the period is two months as per [1])
extended contributions period we introduced was mainly there to find
out whether a previous intern really wanted to stick around the
project even by participating to IRC or mailing list discussions of
the project the person contributed to during the internship, for
example.

In that case, Marina why had you come to believe that the membership committee told you 6 months? Why did the membership committee not point out it wasn't six months after she published her post to the mailing list, either?

It seems unlikely that Marina plucked 6 months out of thin air... She's said the "problem" only arose after she had recommended that some interns should apply and indicated that the membership committee had responded badly to that: What do you have to say about that?

I'm honestly struggling to find out what kind of problem would be
delaying a membership application by two months.

If you want to stick by this decision and believe that it has the support of the community, then what is the problem with proposing an amendment to the bylaws for it and stating the reasons for it in that proposal? In the meantime, let's review some of the problems which arise from not doing that, since there are wider implications here:

GNOME is not a complete meritocracy. It is meant to be representative of the community of contributors (*cough* as the bylaws define them - and that's why they define them). Changes to the definition of an eligible member which override the bylaws can affect the outcome of member elections/referendums and this the most obvious reason why in cases where a blanket exception is to be made to address a perceived problem related to membership illegibility for a particular group, that it follows that the evidence for making that exception should be compelling, the relevant amendment should be proposed to the list in the appropriate way and then agreed via the list, before being implemented rather than whatever has lead us here. Really, what about this has been so urgent about this issue that it could not possibly wait 21 days to resolve it one way or another?

As regards comments on Outreachy internships (which seem to have clearly been cited a lot more in defence of this new practice, than GSoC); this is an internship specifically developed to address an identified problem of inclusiveness for under-represented minorities in FOSS and it is heavily associated with GNOME so, it's worth emphasising that one of the barriers which women are particularly likely to face in general, is that they are more likely to be told that their work has less value than someone else's, when that is not actually the case.  A number of members here have indicated that interns are actually making non-trivial contributions, so on that basis would you not agree with the principle that applying a less favourable membership illegibility criteria for these interns in particular than for everybody else, sends out a somewhat contradictory message to the community about GNOME's commitment to equality? Moreover, if it is actually the case that this idea was a response to the applications from Outreachy (formally OPW) internships (as the comments on this thread are beginning to suggest), then we really do have problem.

As mentioned in response to the initial concern that was raised at the start of this thread, an intern who is eligible for membership would not recognise they have the right to have their application assessed by the membership committee when this is not the case and the committee itself (according to the bylaws) is supposed to assess applications on a case by case basis and are granted the overriding say on the outcome of each application because of that. This practice has very likely introduced a systematic error into the membership application data, which could mislead the unweary not only on the acceptance/rejection ratio, but the contribution which amounts to something non-trivial too (which relates to the concerns raised at the very start of this thread). Things have easily become convoluted and inconsistent, with some saying six months some saying two and others not knowing at all. Who's to say next year the bar won't change again in some other new way? While these sorts of changes can be made by committees or in other discussions held outside of this mailing list, anything seems possible.

Magdalen