Re: foundation application..

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

> Keep it simple. The point is to check whether asking for 2 extra
> months of involvement to internship is based on solid ground, no only
> perception or anecdotes, as you claimed it is done. The archives with
> the decisions are public as well.

Sorry for prolonging this thread, but if we are trying to answer
questions I would like to know if people have considerations about this:

Firstly, neither you nor anyone else her should be made to feel like you need to apologise for exercising the privileges which are granted to all member on this list, equally.

- What is the impact of having people joining the Foundation and
vanishing later?
- Do people that don't intend to continue contributing to GNOME actually
apply to GNOME Foundation? If yes, why would they do that?

This is a really good question.

I've started looking at the membership list data now and although the information is not very forthcoming so it may take some time to compile, early results are beginning to indicate that a higher proportion of active contributors were previously interns at some time or another.

One of the most notable differences which seems to become apparent early on between members who are past interns and other kinds of members is that the former group don't seem to show a tendency of becoming affiliated with any large sponsoring corporations very soon after their internships have ended i.e. a higher proportion of past interns seem to be unaffiliated volunteers.

Further to that point another notable difference between former interns which I should have mentioned (although this concern has already been raised earlier on in the thread) and other kinds of members seems to be gender which may be here relevant too.

In the UK (and most of Europe, I believe) it is unlawful to apply blanket practices which could specifically cause greater detriment to those who have protected characteristics than anyone else (gender is of course, a protected characteristic in the eyes of UK law). I cannot say whether or not this is the case in the USA or not though. 

This could indicate there may be some conflict of interest in granting these people membership privileges including voting rights, but we'll have to wait and see until more of the data has been collected.

I think those are important questions because if people vanish after the
end of the internship but they don't apply at all, this probably doesn't
require special handling from the membership committee. And if that
happens sometimes, if it doesn't cause any issue, again, why bother with
special ruling this and risking potential problems?

Again, a brilliant question. On the face of it this seems to be purely about reducing paper work for the membership committee (i.e. fewer applications means less work for them). However there are clearly some implications which affect our democratic processes. The question of whether we have a justifiable reason to take steps like this to deny this group of people a vote or not on the basis we worry they might not use it, is an important one because that does not objectively make sense. Clearly, the extra paper work shouldn't be a factor in decisions like this.

Thanks for your input.

Magdalen