On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 12:37 PM, William L. Thomson Jr. <wlt-ml@o-sinc.com>
wrote:

> On Friday, January 6, 2017 9:26:50 AM EST Alec Warner wrote:
> >
> > I don't wish to speculate on the legalities for each person, so to
> simplify
> > I equate "One cannot legally join the foundation" and "One does not want
> to
> > join a US based foundation." I think nominally I want to avoid the
> > hypothetical case. So either we have people who are unable to join a US
> > based foundation (either out of legal risk, or personal preference). How
> do
> > we support this use case?
>
> I do not think there is any difference between being a member or a
> developer.
> If you cannot legally be a member, you likely cannot legally be a
> developer. I
> can see US courts being more concerned with committers than members.
> Members
> can only can vote, maybe sue the foundation though any individual could as
> well. Committers can do far worse, malicious commit, etc.
>

Like I said, I wanted to avoid legal speculation. So lets assume a person
can legally be a member of the US foundation, but for undisclosed reasons
that person chooses not to do so.

Should that person still be able to be a developer?
Will gentoo still accept contributions from that person?

This is my reading of the point Andreas is trying to raise. I suspect it is
solvable as you mention, by letting developers opt-out of being legally a
part of the Foundation (as is the case today.) The concern of course is
that if too many developers opt out we end up with a similar problem that
we have today (not enough foundation members.)

The benefit of a merged structure is that only voting developers vote for
the merged board; so if one was to abstain from being a foundation member
they could also lose the benefit of voting for the board (so they can't
choose council members for example.) This is a loss of influence compared
to the current system but could provide some incentive for developers to
retain nominal involvement outside of being a simple committer.

-A


> A simple opt out of foundation membership should suffice in both cases.
> Auto
> add, but allow for exclusion. Maybe a form saying they know they are
> waiving
> their right to vote for choice. I am not sure the not legally able to be a
> member is really an issues as it would more pertain to developers and
> staff.
>
> --
> William L. Thomson Jr.
>