From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([69.77.167.62] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1Ka8wU-0004JV-HZ for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:55:38 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 08267E0384; Mon, 1 Sep 2008 12:55:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vms046pub.verizon.net (vms046pub.verizon.net [206.46.252.46]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E4F41E0384; Mon, 1 Sep 2008 12:55:37 +0000 (UTC) Received: from gw.thefreemanclan.net ([72.81.8.187]) by vms046.mailsrvcs.net (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-6.01 (built Apr 3 2006)) with ESMTPA id <0K6I000GXP7UWVEG@vms046.mailsrvcs.net>; Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:55:07 -0500 (CDT) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by gw.thefreemanclan.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DEDC1759A83; Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:55:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:55:05 -0400 From: Richard Freeman Subject: Re: [gentoo-nfp] Foundation by laws: new Article V In-reply-to: To: Alec Warner Cc: Chrissy Fullam , gentoo-nfp , gentoo-council Message-id: <48BBE629.6050009@gentoo.org> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-nfp@lists.gentoo.org MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit References: <02a001c90ba7$8cc981f0$a65c85d0$@org> User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 (X11/20080809) X-Archives-Salt: 4d979a24-6c33-4644-b06f-8afadded47c5 X-Archives-Hash: db2501678280c19530fd165ae8c7b01e Alec Warner wrote: > On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Chrissy Fullam wrote: >> Refer to bylaws that were approved in today's Trustee meeting: >> >> I cannot understand why a person cannot be on the Council and on the >> Trustees? We had someone do so in the past and no conflicts or issues arose. >> What is the reasoning that a person cannot serve on the technical team and >> the legal team? > > a) Should the member go missing we would be down 1 position in both > bodies, a subcase of Single Point of Failure. I figured I'd raise an issue that is probably worth thinking about which doesn't appear to have come up. In the past the largest point of failure for the trustees has been simply not having enough of them. That being the case, does it make sense to do anything to limit potential contribution to this team? In theory council members are in the place they are in because for whatever reason they are willing and able to devote a lot of devotion to Gentoo. They should be far more capable of wearing multiple hats than others. I'm fine, of course, with general controls to prevent too much concentration of power - but that would apply to individual non-council trustees as well. Having dual-membership would also help to increase alignment of the two bodies. Ideally I'd probably only have one body (like most corporations), but there are good practical reasons for the current split (differing expertise/interest required, US residency issues). In my thinking, if the only thing the trustees did was attend a 5 minute monthly meeting, cut the odd check to somebody helping out the organization, and renew the annual paperwork that would be a success. In order to do that we need a number of bodies for oversight, but not everybody needs to be willing to spend 10 hours a month on the foundation. If one or two are willing that is probably plenty - but they'll need to avoid being frustrated with others who might only appear to be dead weight (but dead weight is better than running into a situation where only 1-2 people even bother to run for office). I think that some of the problems in the past with the trustees has been a desire to bite off more than they could chew. Sure, maybe one or two members could have handled it, but if everybody isn't willing to go along then what happens is that nobody voices the problem out of a desire to go along with the team, but nobody contributes either and then 1-2 people get burned out carrying the load. The solution isn't to yell at the other non-contributors, but rather to not take on more than absolutely essential without fully counting the cost. Gentoo has some serious manpower constraints. That doesn't make us a "dying distro" or anything - but we do need to be careful about not focusing too much effort on non-essentials. If somebody wants to volunteer to do something extra that is great (that is how a community effort works), but it is important that we not assign "jobs" to volunteers that aren't absolutely essential. My personal opinion is that the trustees would do best to focus on making the foundation minimally functional (ie all essential legal paperwork in place - drop anything controversial and focus on bylaws that all can agree to). Then it should really look to try to join an unbrella organization that will handle the routine issues. That will actually free up trustees to provide more high-level guidance to the organization without getting tied up in administration. All of this is just my personal opinion and I think the trustees would do well to at least think about some of this. I really don't need/demand any reply - you guys are the ones in the hot seat and you wouldn't have been elected if the rest of us didn't respect your judgment. Just be careful about limiting help - at the next trustee election we might find devs volunteering to run on a platform of "I don't intend to lift a finger do do much work, but I don't want to see the trustees die from not having a quorum so I'll run" and getting elected due to a lack of candidates. I'm not actually convinced that this is an entirely bad thing except that it deviates from what would be ideal.