On 2/1/08, George <cokehabit@...> wrote:
> Although he has already said no I hope to convince him to say yes by
> nominating him again:
>
> Daniel Robbins
Hey George,
One of the reasons I wanted to come back in the manner I initially
suggested is because I have limited time. To work as a trustee,
particularly to do what I would hope to do, would require a very large
investment of time to work within the structure that currently exists.
I don't have the amount of free time required to do that, so I would
either need to choose to have a stressful and overly busy life and
succeed with improving Gentoo or to be disciplined about not investing
too much time in the project but then not getting much done as a
trustee, in which case you would probably be disappointed in me as a
trustee. Coming back to Gentoo as a trustee as it currently operates,
for me at least, would basically be a 40-hour-a-week full-time job.
One of the benefits of moving away from a purely democratic model is
that having people who can simply make decisions is *way* more
efficient in terms of time. Yes, people can always disagree and leave
the project if you don't get them on board with your ideas, but that's
life. I don't see Linus taking polls and reading tea leaves because he
worries that he might alienate some Linux developers by a decision
that he makes. Competent people won't make decisions in a vacuum and
will consult with the appropriate subject matter experts first. Often,
the "experts" are the users and other members of the community.
If the structure stays pretty much the way it is, I think there might
be some need to have a full-time and competitively paid President or
Chief Architect position so some skilled and experienced person could
actually devote their efforts full-time to improving Gentoo. I am
aware that this is out of the realm of possibility right now, so that
leaves the option of streamlining the efficiency and effectiveness of
the organization to better match up with peoples' real-world time
commitments as volunteers.
That may involve scaling back ambitious plans in terms of joining
various other NFP entities and simply running the Foundation as it
currently exists, filing paperwork on time (which is not hard), etc.
The time wasted on investigating SPI and other entities far exceeds
the time that is required to actually run the Foundation as it exists.
I realize that this leaves some aspects of the Foundation's goals
unrealized. I think as long as this is communicated to the community
clearly, then this is OK for the time being. First things first. Get a
track record of getting the critical things taken care of - things
like getting a registered agent for the existing organization so that
the Foundation has a valid mailing address when its charter is
renewed, ensuring that the NM records are up-to-date and reflect
reality, etc. There is more than enough money to get an experienced NM
lawyer to help that can take care of this quite easily.
For the project, steps need to be taken to reduce bureaucracy without
harming the quality o the Portage tree, to improve efficiency and
streamline decision-making mechanisms and reduced centralized decision
making when possible.
Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. So I hope that gives you some more
insight into why I chose to decline the nomination. My initial offer
is what I determined I could personally handle while balancing other
commitments. (Note that I'm not secretly hinting that my initial offer
is still available, it isn't.)
Today, actually, I was planning to unsubscribe from -nfp due to other
commitments, which will probably happen in a few minutes.
-Daniel
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