Gentoo Archives: gentoo-nfp

From: Richard Freeman <rich0@g.o>
To: Alec Warner <antarus@g.o>
Cc: Chrissy Fullam <musikc@g.o>, gentoo-nfp <gentoo-nfp@l.g.o>, gentoo-council <gentoo-council@l.g.o>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-nfp] Foundation by laws: new Article V
Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:55:38
Message-Id: 48BBE629.6050009@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-nfp] Foundation by laws: new Article V by Alec Warner
1 Alec Warner wrote:
2 > On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Chrissy Fullam <musikc@g.o> wrote:
3 >> Refer to bylaws that were approved in today's Trustee meeting:
4 >>
5 >> I cannot understand why a person cannot be on the Council and on the
6 >> Trustees? We had someone do so in the past and no conflicts or issues arose.
7 >> What is the reasoning that a person cannot serve on the technical team and
8 >> the legal team?
9 >
10 > a) Should the member go missing we would be down 1 position in both
11 > bodies, a subcase of Single Point of Failure.
12
13 I figured I'd raise an issue that is probably worth thinking about which
14 doesn't appear to have come up. In the past the largest point of
15 failure for the trustees has been simply not having enough of them.
16 That being the case, does it make sense to do anything to limit
17 potential contribution to this team? In theory council members are in
18 the place they are in because for whatever reason they are willing and
19 able to devote a lot of devotion to Gentoo. They should be far more
20 capable of wearing multiple hats than others. I'm fine, of course, with
21 general controls to prevent too much concentration of power - but that
22 would apply to individual non-council trustees as well.
23
24 Having dual-membership would also help to increase alignment of the two
25 bodies. Ideally I'd probably only have one body (like most
26 corporations), but there are good practical reasons for the current
27 split (differing expertise/interest required, US residency issues).
28
29 In my thinking, if the only thing the trustees did was attend a 5 minute
30 monthly meeting, cut the odd check to somebody helping out the
31 organization, and renew the annual paperwork that would be a success.
32 In order to do that we need a number of bodies for oversight, but not
33 everybody needs to be willing to spend 10 hours a month on the
34 foundation. If one or two are willing that is probably plenty - but
35 they'll need to avoid being frustrated with others who might only appear
36 to be dead weight (but dead weight is better than running into a
37 situation where only 1-2 people even bother to run for office).
38
39 I think that some of the problems in the past with the trustees has been
40 a desire to bite off more than they could chew. Sure, maybe one or two
41 members could have handled it, but if everybody isn't willing to go
42 along then what happens is that nobody voices the problem out of a
43 desire to go along with the team, but nobody contributes either and then
44 1-2 people get burned out carrying the load. The solution isn't to yell
45 at the other non-contributors, but rather to not take on more than
46 absolutely essential without fully counting the cost.
47
48 Gentoo has some serious manpower constraints. That doesn't make us a
49 "dying distro" or anything - but we do need to be careful about not
50 focusing too much effort on non-essentials. If somebody wants to
51 volunteer to do something extra that is great (that is how a community
52 effort works), but it is important that we not assign "jobs" to
53 volunteers that aren't absolutely essential.
54
55 My personal opinion is that the trustees would do best to focus on
56 making the foundation minimally functional (ie all essential legal
57 paperwork in place - drop anything controversial and focus on bylaws
58 that all can agree to). Then it should really look to try to join an
59 unbrella organization that will handle the routine issues. That will
60 actually free up trustees to provide more high-level guidance to the
61 organization without getting tied up in administration.
62
63 All of this is just my personal opinion and I think the trustees would
64 do well to at least think about some of this. I really don't
65 need/demand any reply - you guys are the ones in the hot seat and you
66 wouldn't have been elected if the rest of us didn't respect your
67 judgment. Just be careful about limiting help - at the next trustee
68 election we might find devs volunteering to run on a platform of "I
69 don't intend to lift a finger do do much work, but I don't want to see
70 the trustees die from not having a quorum so I'll run" and getting
71 elected due to a lack of candidates. I'm not actually convinced that
72 this is an entirely bad thing except that it deviates from what would be
73 ideal.

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-nfp] Foundation by laws: new Article V "William L. Thomson Jr." <wltjr@g.o>
Re: [gentoo-nfp] Foundation by laws: new Article V Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o>