Re: [gentoo-nfp] Gentoo Foundation Trustees nominations

[Andrew Savchenko]

Hi,

On Wed, 12 Jul 2017 15:53:54 +0200 Francisco Blas Izquierdo Riera
(klondike) wrote:
> Hi bircoph!
> > I'm afraid in case of the trustee position the desire to fix stuff
> > is not sufficient. If I understand correctly, trustee's work
> > involves a lot of legal and financial issues. And here we have some
> > legal and political limitations.
> >
> > 1. The US social security number. To my understanding it is
> > required to deal with financial and accounting smoothly. I don't
> > have one and without it the ways I can help will be very limited.
> Well for what I know, Swift doesn't have such a number either, yet you
> can see he is registered as one of the directors despite being from
> Belgium:
> https://portal.sos.state.nm.us/BFS/online/CorporationBusinessSearch/CorporationBusinessInformation?businessId=214657

I can't even open this URL using Russian IP, they seems to be
blocked. This answers pretty much my concerns. I can open it
through both Tor and proxies in other countries, of course.

I don't know what entity is blocking connections, but my research
shows that blocking is definitely country-based: different cities,
ISP's ip's with the same result. In Russia there is a censorship
present, but the register of blocked resources is publicly
available for queries and provided URL, domain name and its IP
address are not listed there. So at least officially this site is
not blocked in Russia.

I'm not 100% sure that Russian IPs are blocked in US to access some
US national resources, but it is possible.

> > 2. Legal expertise. I have near zero knowledge of US laws. I have
> > some knowledge about Russian laws and experience with its
> > bureaucracy, but law systems are so different between countries that
> > such experience is likely more harmful than useful.
> Although the Gentoo Foundation is based on the USA it's activities
> (through the different developers) entail most parts of the world, for
> example the Gentoo Foundation sponsored the Gentoo project's presence at
> FOSDEM through the adquisition of give aways for marketing. Having
> people with knowledge of how other law systems work would be helpful in
> many ways, on one side by allowing the Foundation help promote
> activities in other countries, on the other by being able to direct the
> Foundation if issues to Gentoo developers happen on them.
>
> > 3. World political issues. Since trustees need to work within US
> > law space my Russian citizenship may harm affairs and make things
> > more complicated for everyone.
> If this became a problem I'm very positive the rest of trustees would
> agree on moving the foundation somewhere where the citizenship of our
> members wouldn't be a problem. Keep in mind that although the Gentoo
> Foundation is based on the USA, there is no reason (other than statu quo
> and therefore ease of management) to keep it there.

We are living in the world far from ideal and as Rich pointed out
there are good reasons to keep the Foundation in the US. I just
don't want to cause troubles where it can be avoided.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko