[gentoo-nfp] Re: [gentoo-project] Foundation membership and who can join

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 12:35 PM, Matthew Thode
<prometheanfire@g.o> wrote:
> Current bylaws state that to become a member you need to petition the
> trustees for membership to the foundation.  What verification is done by
> trustees is up in the air.  Members also seem to be members for life
> unless they remove themselves are are removed by a vote of the trustees.
>
> I suggest we use and/or modify the existing staff quiz for use as a
> guide for who to admit, as 'graded' by trustees.  I also suggest that
> some for of positive acknowledgement that they will adhere to the CoC
> would be helpful as well.

We've already talked via IM, but some principles I have which probably
are worth just airing are:

We should have one standard for people who are "part of Gentoo."
Let's call them "staff" for the sake of argument.  Staff may or may
not commit to the tree (which is why I didn't use the term devs,
though I realize in practice we tend to use the two terms
interchangeably today).  However, they should be active contributors,
and there should be some kind of way of cleaning up people who aren't
active (the bar need not be super high).

Staff should be expected to adhere to the CoC, and should be all
subject to the same enforcement of it.  Staff should be automatically
members of the Foundation, and cease to be Foundation members when
they are no longer staff.  The Foundation should of course have a say
in the criteria for admission/removal as a result.  However, if we
want to be "one Gentoo" and stop being a "two headed monster" we need
to stop having multiple sets of criteria for how is and isn't a
member/voter/etc.

Developers with commit access are a subset of staff, and their commit
activity is subject to QA.  Staff who aren't developers are generally
not in the scope of QA.

There will need to be some teams responsible for administering people
getting in, and leaving (whether by inactivity, choice, or forcibly).
There will need to be a governance body with the final say in this.

I think if you start from this set of principles and work the rest
out, you're a lot more likely to end up with something that isn't a
two-headed beast.  You have one constituency, which is the start to
having a more unified leadership structure.  I don't think that this
addresses all the issues (not by a long shot), but having just one set
of members and standards and enforcement of those standards is
probably a necessary part of any solution.

-- 
Rich