Re: [gentoo-nfp] [RFC] Alternative methods for determining 'interest in Foundation affairs'

[Aaron Bauman]

On Fri, Sep 06, 2019 at 08:58:59PM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 6, 2019 at 4:35 PM Brad Teaford Cowan
> <bradly.cowan@×××××.com> wrote:
> >
> > First of all, the foundation was formed in
> > defense of the exact situation that Gentoo is facing now, as a control
> > buffer keeping certain developers from literally taking over every
> > aspect of the distro for their own gain.
>
> This seems really odd to me.  I don't think there are any signs that a
> very small number of devs have an unusual amount of control at the
> moment.  Over the last few years we've had a reasonable amount of
> turnover in both the Council and the Trustees.  Sure, we have devs who
> are more active than others in making proposals, and so on, but these
> generally require approval by others.  To the extent that a few key
> team leads have more significant influence, their decisions almost
> always can be appealed.
>

Agree

> Ironically the Foundation Trustees are the weaker link historically
> when it comes to having a small number of people able to "take over."

Agree, but I believe this is mostly due to the financial aspect of running the
foundation. A proposal has been set forth to have a third party CPA handle the
financials. Removing this burden would allow for the non-profit to pass by-laws
and "protect" the distribution.

> At one point we only had 3 Trustees I think, and I believe two of
> those disappeared.  At that point our one remaining Trustee could have
> probably just set himself up as benevolent dictator if desired, and
> there was actually talk at the time about moving to that model
> (drobbins offered to take the role as I recall - IMO without any ill
> intent).  Now, at no point did anybody do anything "bad" as far as I'm

No need for such a thing to happen. We can let the council run the distro and
the foundation to support it. It will work in my opinion.

> aware, but I'm just saying that it could have happened.  This is
> simply because we don't have a lot of people interested in Foundation
> work.  After this crisis more people stepped up to try to prevent his
> from happening, and since then we've always been able to keep the
> seats fairly full, though we've still struggled with the housekeeping.

As stated above, I think this is mostly the financial aspect.

> In any case, I don't really see how the Foundation can really operate
> as some kind of check because to the degree that the Foundation has
> some kind of ultimate control, anybody who wanted to do something
> "bad" could just take over the Foundation, and it would basically

The only way someone could "take over" the distro is to wage a legal battle
against the copyrights and code of the distro. This is highly unlikely, but it
does not negate the purpose of the foundation.

> involve the exact same work they would have to do to take over the
> Council, except for which group they'd need to get representatives
> onto.  The voting pools for the two substantially overlap.  In the

The council has no legal representation and it should be codified in the by-laws
of the foundation. This will preserve what the council decides and allow the
distro to operate as-is. The council is, in my opinion, the "daily driver" of
the distro. I hope that all see it as such. 

The foundation has no place in overriding the council at all. There are some
"gray areas", but for the most part there is no reason to do so. I think we have
very competent leadership in our elected council.

> unlikely event of some kind of total breakdown between the developers
> and foundation members you'd basically have one group that does all
> the work and the other which owns the name and servers, and you'd
> probably just end up with a fork under a new name using minimal/free
> infra until that all got sorted out.  Again, that is hypothetical and
> pretty unlikely, especially right now, in my opinion.
>

I really hope we never see a fork of the distro.

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron