Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-nfp] Gentoo Foundation: A second election

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto
<jmbsvicetto@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> AFAIK, the Trustees have always argued that we should not reduce the number of members in the Board.
>

Keep in mind that the Council is something that is largely up to
ourselves and so if it becomes a bit dysfunctional we can always just
sort it out and elect a new one or reorganize.

The Foundation is a legal entity, and if there are disputes over who
represents it, these will end up being settled in a court of law.
There is also money and property at stake.  We can't just all get
together and sort it out if something bad happens, because if somebody
should take legal control over the Trustees, they can with one motion
legally boot all the members out, and then we're all fighting it out
in court.

It is just best to keep a few people in the Trustee role so that the
risk of a majority doing something dumb is low.

There was that situation many years ago where it had dwindled down to
I think one person, and there was talk about bringing back drobbins as
a BDFL or whatever.  Without getting into pros and cons I just wanted
to point out that legally it was just the vote of a single person that
mattered - the one remaining Trustee.  If that person had been of the
mind to just do whatever they felt was best in spite of massive
objection, they could have done so, and the legal recourse would have
been so painful that it probably would be easier to just fork and
change the name.

Now, forking is always an option, as we recently saw with IRC
networks.  Still, nobody wants to deal with that if they don't have
to, so it is best to have enough votes on the board that nobody can
just pull the whole thing in some direction.

-- 
Rich