On Mon, 2019-06-03 at 20:17 -0700, philip chimento gmail com wrote:
I will try to explain my understanding. I think it's accurate to say that so far, minutes are approved by unanimous consent, since the directors all have access to the draft minutes before they are published and have the opportunity to comment on them. In the case where something is written incorrectly, the other directors do propose corrections to me. However, in my previous experience on boards of volunteer organizations, just like you I have only encountered organizations where the board formally approved the previous minutes as the first item on the agenda in each meeting. I believe it is good practice for the board to approve the minutes more formally.
We are in agreement here.
It's not my intention to compel all future GNOME Foundation boards to follow this particular guideline that I am currently proposing. For one thing, I expect that we may try out some of the things in this guideline, and find that they don't work in practice, and I'm sure when we discuss it in an upcoming meeting not all of those things can be predicted. I believe that minor procedural changes such as these don't require a vote, as it is up to each year's board to find the system that's most efficient for them, so long as it complies with all applicable laws and regulations. However, I do hope that by documenting best practices and the reasoning behind them, future boards will find it logical to continue them.
I disagree. What I was expecting is simply a formal vote to make these Guidelines mandatory. Doing so does not prevent any future changes at all. After all, both the initial vote and any changes to the document are just a tiny overhead on top of the discussions that will happen anyway. But an overhead that makes the Boards work and thoughts on matters of more transparency visible to the Membership. Having these Guidlines both publicly available and mandatory is a great way to show that the Board is serious about the issue. It sets well defined expectations for Directors that the Membership can actually rely on, and should it ever come to that, even hold them accountable to. While I seriously hope that we will not need this, it is well known that the publishing of minutes has not always been a smooth process in the Foundation. I do believe that these benefits by far outweigh the slight overhead that a formal vote incurs. Benjamin
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