Gentoo Archives: gentoo-nfp

From: Richard Freeman <rich0@g.o>
To: "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@g.o>
Cc: gentoo-nfp <gentoo-nfp@l.g.o>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-nfp] Point behind foundation members existence
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:35:56
Message-Id: 484FAA79.9050701@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-nfp] Point behind foundation members existence by "William L. Thomson Jr."
1 William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
2 >
3 > Seems the rules could just be changed to say, active dev, on for 1yr,
4 > etc. You can vote, just like for council. Since it seems all Foundation
5 > membership gives one, is the ability to vote on Foundation matters.
6 > Which is basically just elections.
7 >
8
9 As seen in the other thread on spending authority, there is the
10 possibility of conflict between the council and the trustees, and we
11 obviously want to avoid that when possible or chaos would result.
12
13 For this reason, I think that it is important that the constituencies of
14 the foundation and the council should be the same - or as close to the
15 same as possible. If these boards are both elected by the same people
16 they're not going to end up being totally opposed on numerous issues.
17
18 In an ideal world there would be a single governing body, which avoids
19 these kinds of issues altogether. That is how most non-profits operate
20 - there is a single board of directors that runs the whole show,
21 typically though hired executives.
22
23 The downside to a single governing body is that for legal reasons it has
24 to operate in accordance with bylaws/laws/etc, and there has been
25 reluctance to adopting this level of formality for all Gentoo matters.
26
27 What is ultimately important is that these two bodies work in harmony -
28 I think that is what is desired in any case. If there is substantial
29 conflict it may possibly lead to ruin for the distro - at least under
30 the "Gentoo" name...
31 --
32 gentoo-nfp@l.g.o mailing list