Re: [gentoo-nfp] Questions For Gentoo Foundation Trustee Candidates

[Alec Warner]

On Sat, Jul 13, 2019 at 5:18 AM Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o> wrote:

> On 2019.07.13 13:12, Roy Bamford wrote:
> > Team,
> >
> > This is a meta topic to collect Questions For Gentoo Foundation
> > Trustee Candidates together.
>
> We have several candidates with a declared platform of dissolving
> the Gentoo foundation.
>
> 1. Will all candidates make their position on the future of the Foundation
> clear.
>

I plan to dissolve the Foundation. I would prefer the assets go to an
umbrella, but I'm also open to other options.


>
> 2. Will all candidates explain the reasoning supporting their position
> on their future plans for the existence (or otherwise) of the Foundation.
>

The Foundation has three main problems:

- It needs a minimum of three capable / interested trustees to be on the
board and operate the Foundation. Note here i don't mean that these three
humans do the work (because they should contract with professionals to do
much of it.) I'm not convinced there are three people to do it. In this
election we have 4 humans for 3 slots. When discussing with the current
board, half of the board doesn't even want to be on the board; but without
a board the Foundation would be in trouble. This is not the kind of board
that I would want to have, and I think its one reason why the work the
board is accountable for rarely happens. This is not unique to this year.
In previous years; boards that did not even do basic Foundation activities
(e.g. taxes, accounting, etc.) *and* ran unopposed (e.g. some years there
was no election.)

- The members themselves don't hold anyone accountable. Basically this
follows the last piece of the first bullet; that the board can basically be
bad at their job and keep their seats trivially. The members are supposed
to care about the board's mission (to support Gentoo!) but in fact most
members do nothing and vote once a year when asked (like now!) I suspect if
a potato was put on the ballot the members would vote for that as a trustee
if it filled a seat; because they don't care about the foundation working
correctly or not provided it continues to fund Infra (nominally one of two
useful things the Foundation actually does.)

- The scope of work done by the Foundation during it's 15 years is minimal
(trademark defense and funding) and I believe an umbrella organization can
do both. I concede it limits future options (because once we give assets to
the umbrella they can only do what is in any agreement we sign.) However,
its a risk I'm willing to take given the poor performance of the Foundation
in the past (and the anticipated poor performance in the future; see first
two points.)

-A


> --
> Regards,
>
> Roy Bamford
> (Neddyseagoon) a member of
> elections
> gentoo-ops
> forum-mods
> arm64