Re: [gentoo-project] Groups under the Council or Foundation: the structure & processes thereof

[Luca Barbato]

On 13/11/2016 20:26, Alec Warner wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 4:33 AM, Luca Barbato <lu_zero@g.o>
> wrote:
>
>> On 13/10/2016 01:30, Robin H. Johnson wrote:
>>> TL;DR: move comrel, infra, PR to Foundation. Have strict(er)
>>> application of policies to them in line with their powers.
>>
>
>> The foundation was made only to collect and redistribute money. In
>> order to do that it was made sort of copyright collector as well
>> (but that was actively blocked by the fact the EU law prevents
>> that).
>>
>
> What I think is actually true is that there are some risks the
> current board sees, and they (we?, I am on the board after all) see
> one way to reduce the risk is by this joining. I think we should also
> be open to evaluating the risks and seeking other avenues to mitigate
> them.
>
> I think, speaking in general terms, one risk is the following.
>
> 1) When a community member feels harmed by the community, they can
> file a suit. They can sue individuals, or they can sue the
> Foundation. They cannot sue "Comrel" for example, because Comrel is
> not an entity. They can sue the individuals that compose comrel, or
> they can sue the Foundation.

One step back, if somebody with the Gentoo hat on (or off) does
something horrible or creepy or in any way against our social contract
or the code of conduct, we, as Gentoo, provide a point to complain so
that the name of Gentoo is not tarnished by such actions.

That point of complaint is currently Comrel.
Comrel has to evaluate the situation at the best of the team's
possibilities and in that specific case ask infra and the groups
managing the communication channels to prevent that person to keep doing
what's doing.
That's not the primary activity of the team, but we had to manage that
as well.

If somebody feels wronged by Comrel proceedings there is the Council to
appeal.

After the Council the person feeling wronged can try to sue the person
he thinks that wronged him assuming there is any legal leg to stand.

The foundation is nowhere there as long:
- the issue isn't about copyright, assuming the copyright had been
misrelinquished to the foundation.
- the issue is not mismanagement of money.
- the issue is not cause by hardware owned by the foundation.

The foundation does not hire anybody in Gentoo, the foundation has no
liability for what people does as long it does not involves the 3 points
above.

> 2) If they sue the Foundation, we are worried that a 100% hands-off
> solution is going to be an effective defense. In the current scheme,
> the Foundation has no real control over the operation of Comrel. I
> think there is a lack of confidence that this defense is sufficient
> to dismiss a suit though.

They cannot sue the foundation, the foundation does not have any link to
the people, beside maybe providing hardware to few developers that
needed it.

> So we discard that defense. What other defenses can we offer?
>
> 1) We can move Comrel under the Foundation. That way we have
> influence over their activities. We can create policies that provide
> better legal defenses (like the Code of Conduct for instance) but
> also many of the transparency policies you see on other threads.

You do not have the problem until you start hiring people.

> I think speaking more generally, you could replace "Comrel" with any
> Gentoo project. At the end of the day the Foundation holds all the
> assets and pays all the bills. How do we mitigate the Foundation's
> liability for the actions of volunteers in the project?

The foundation is not liable for any volunteers actions, bar the 3 cases
I mentioned.

lu