Re: [gentoo-nfp] Board of trustees

[Sven Vermeulen]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 08:39:20AM -0500, Corey Shields wrote:
> Yes, I feel that setting up the NFP quickly
> is the best thing to do, but I guess I was wrong in assuming that people
> assigned to the board would know what that means and what the board will do,
> for all I know right now it's just a name.

Daniel has written several e-mails throughout several threads. I'll try to
quote the most relevant e-mails here. My apologies if I take those out of
contents. Mainly you'll have to see the NFP as an entity, not the board or
trustees or whatever you'd like to call them. The board is needed to have
such an entity. 


1. Maintaining definition of what a "Gentoo Developer" is
"""
(...) and the board of trustees will be in charge of maintaining the 
definition of what constitutes a "Gentoo developer."
(...)
The board will be responsible for keeping this definition clear. This will
also allow for things like improvements to our official developer training
procedure, mentorship requirements, security requirements etc.
"""

2. Protect the use of the Gentoo trademark and copyrighted software/artwork
"""
If the NFP survives, it would still have ownership of the trademarks.
There's no way for me to take them from the NFP, so no need for the NFP to
take them back. The NFP could simply resume using them if (theoretically) it
shut down for a period of time but then resumed its mission.
"""

3. Maintain and Deal with Funding for the Gentoo Project
"""
To avoid getting sidetracked for another six months, I'm getting this NFP
set up first, and then the trustees will be addressing funding issues as a
team. (...) Trying to do everything at once has shown to be a poor model for 
making progress, so I'm being very careful to avoid doing so now.
"""

4. Provide a Central yet Non-single entity for the Gentoo Project

I haven't really found this in the exact sense and I'm having difficulties
writing the point clearly, but what I mean with this is that Daniel is
taking lots of heat as he's currently seen as the single point of Gentoo's
future (in the sense that, if Daniel quits, Gentoo will have to go through a
difficult period). That puts a lot of stress on a single person's shoulders.

Having an NFP care this burden makes it easy and fun for the people really
interested in Gentoo's future to discuss, propose and develop without being
personally addressed (both in positive as negative way). 

See it as the same reason why for instance GNOME has a board.


In case you really want to know what a "trustee" requirement is (for the
initial board):

"""
Being a trustee does not carry with it any additional responsibilities. It
is not like being a manager where you are required to have a top-level
project that you are actively leading. The trustees will simply ensure that
an effective and fair organizational model exists for the development
project as a whole, and oversee it in as gentle and positive a way as
possible.
"""

> I don't think that coming up with a responsability list for the board should
> delay the NFP creation much, maybe a couple of hours or so.

On the contrary. Writing a list doesn't take long, but there are always
people who will disagree with that list and want to see changes in it. This
will eventually lead to a long delay before the list is official and even
then people will still disagree.

Daniel's made a good call in creating the NFP first and have the
(unavoidable) discussions later (or now, but not by trying to limit the
creation of the NFP). Both can be done concurrently :)

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen


-- 
 ^__^   And Larry saw that it was Good.
 (oo)                                      Sven Vermeulen
 (__)   http://www.gentoo.org              Documentation & PR