Re: [gentoo-project] Meeting agenda - Council meeting 2018-04-08

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 9:02 AM, Alexis Ballier <aballier@g.o> wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Apr 2018 16:44:47 -0400
> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>
>>
>> Presumably it would work similarly to the current state - we'd
>> encourage people to donate via whatever organization we want the most
>> money flowing into at the time.  If we need more money in the
>> Foundation bank account, we'd point donors to the Foundation.  If we
>> needed more money in some other bank account, we'd point donors to
>> that one instead.
>
> Wow. So, presumably, we'd be showing a great lack of professionalism to
> potential donors by our inability to solve ridiculous internal
> disputes and asking them to pick sides.
> Budgeting and delegating management of it is what usually allows to
> maintain each sub-entity bank account (or virtual bank account) on
> tracks, but the requirement for this to work is to be able to agree
> in the first place...

I wasn't suggesting having individuals "pick sides."  If we wanted one
org to have more money we'd have the other org turn away donors and
refer them to the other, unless for some reason it makes more sense to
have that particular donor contribute to that particular organization.

I agree that ultimately we need one group to be overall in charge for
this to work, because we don't want two legal entities fighting each
other.

A big part of the problem right now is that our current organizational
model has two groups more-or-less in-charge, and it is difficult to
get agreement on which one should be on top, in part because the model
that makes the most sense legally (Foundation on top) has the worst
organization fit (we're a bunch of programmers, not
accountants/lawyers).  My guess is that if most contributors were
given a choice they'd rather just see the legal issues "go away" and
not have to worry about them.  The problem is that with our current
model that isn't possible, and due to our history it seems to be
pretty hard to change that, and it will be even harder if we're
fighting ourselves.  Our model makes it even worse that we have one
leadership board composed of volunteers who specifically want to be
involved in the legal stuff, which is going to create more conflict.

IMO getting another organization to help us out in our current state
should be legally possible, but would probably require a bit of
salesmanship to pull off.  If half the community actively takes steps
to sabotage whatever solution the other half tries to attempt we're
probably not going to succeed at anything.  This will be especially
hard if due to disagreements on other issues there are individuals who
aim to emphasize the disagreements that already exist.

I think that trying to bring in another org to take on some of the
load makes a lot of sense, but I'm skeptical that it will be possible
if the Trustees are opposed to the idea.  That said, I have a fear
that this problem will just continue to grow worse until something
snaps, and the result may or may not be a viable distro.

-- 
Rich