Re: [gentoo-dev] Nominations for council

[Richard Freeman]

William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> Which one of the first things wrt to the Council that would be mentioned
> in the Bylaws is the Council has full authority and veto power over the
> project. That means the board nor officers can dictate to the Council.
> Council remains on top of it all. Just legally declared, and with other
> rules, regulations, etc, stipulated in detail.
>

Would this run into any kinds of legal issues?  Essentially you're 
creating a non-profit corporation whose governance is subject to what is 
effectively a board of directors that is very loosely defined/ elected/ 
etc.  I'd think that this would run into issues legally, but I suppose 
that being a non-public company it might not be an issue.  If you're not 
already familiar with such things you might want to talk to a lawyer.

I'm torn on this.  In theory the council and trustees/foundation should 
be well-coordinated and they're really just two parts of a single 
effort.  However, for legal reasons the money-handling parts of the 
distro are subject to a lot of controls that need not apply to 
everything else.  If we mix them we either need to formalize more of 
what happens, or potentially risk running into legal issues.

If a lawyer doesn't see this as a problem then just disregard everything 
above.  A little more formality might not kill the project, but on the 
other hand we don't want to create too many barriers to council members 
who are volunteers.  In a more significant corporation like the Red 
Cross I suspect that board members would be paid to attend meetings.
-- 
gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list