Re: [gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-nfp] 2021 Trustees election

[Matt Turner]

On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 3:27 PM Aaron Bauman <bman@g.o> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 06, 2021 at 02:57:38PM -0700, Matt Turner wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 2:32 PM Micha?? Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, 2021-07-06 at 17:29 -0400, Aaron Bauman wrote:
> > > > On Sun, Jun 27, 2021 at 08:11:29PM -0700, Alec Warner wrote:
> > > > > Greetings members and the Gentoo Community.
> > > > >
> > > > > The 2021 election for the Gentoo Foundation board of trustees is coming up.
> > > > > Anyone who is a Foundation Member as of July 1, 2021; is eligible to vote.
> > > > >
> > > > > The nomination period is July 1 - 15 2021.
> > > > > The voting period is July 18 - Aug 18.
> > > > >
> > > > > The Annual General Meeting (AGM) is 8/23 at 0100 UTC on #gentoo-trustees on
> > > > > Libera Chat.
> > > > >
> > > > > The board has 5 members; robbat2, myself, and alicef retire by rotation
> > > > > this election.
> > > > >
> > > > > -A
> > > >
> > > > I would like to nominate:
> > > >
> > > > mgorny
> > >
> > > Thank you for the nomination but I'm going to decline.  I'd like to
> > > focus on Council duties this year.
> >
> > As far as I can tell, you're the only one who has done anything
> > concrete towards merging the Gentoo Foundation into an umbrella
> > organization :(
>
> I explained this to you on IRC, Matt. I even asked what information may
> be lacking, what the Foundation could do to improve communications, and
> pointed you to the documentation for all things umbrella related and
> finances.

In fact you didn't, and that is not the perception I was left with
from our conversation. I suggest that you reread our conversation,
because I don't think you have an accurate memory of it.

18:25 <@   mattst88> | I'm also disappointed that some Trustees that
were elected on a platform of merging the Foundation into an
umbrella... don't seem to have done anything towards that goal
18:25 <FreedomBear> | mattst88: It is a long process...
18:25 <FreedomBear> | mattst88: of course, I think some opinions have changed :)
18:26 <@   mattst88> | It is, but I see mgorny (not a Trustee)
reaching out to umbrella orgs, not Trustees
18:26 <FreedomBear> | mattst88: he requested to do so and it was
approved by the trustees.
18:26 <@   mattst88> | I think he took the initiative because it
wasn't happening otherwise
18:26 <@FreedomBear> | Fair enough.

Obviously the financial work Robin has done is valuable and necessary
if we're to merge into an umbrella organization. I was not referring
to him when I wrote the first line in that snippet.

At no point in the conversation did you give an HTTP link. You said
basically: it's on the Wiki and Bugzilla. Before today, there were
only two minor edits to
https://wiki.gentoo.org/index.php?title=Foundation:FoundationFutureState
since September 2020. Is that an accurate picture of the Trustees'
progress? I have no idea.

There are no non-trivial changes to
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:Main_Page this year. The
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:Main_Page#Board_Minutes
section ends in 2018 with no explanation as to why.

The Foundation:Main_Page doesn't even have an accurate "Last elected"
date for the President.

I'm unsure what you find disagreeable about what I said?

On IRC I asked how I could follow what the Trustees do, and you said:

18:32 <@   mattst88> | right. I meant, is there evidence of activity?
presumably I can't just add myself to the trustees@ alias, so if I
wanted to follow along I should... watch bugzilla?
18:33 <FreedomBear> | mattst88: bugzilla for sure. Wiki has the
account information.

But I'm not sure if Bugzilla contains everything. Presumably not. For
example, it seems that a Trustee contacted the Linux Foundation in
February and March [1]. I only learned about that because I saw
robbat2 ask alicef in #gentoo-dev to summarize it for the Wiki. Robin
added a bunch of information to that page today, and that's great, but
probably insufficient as a general strategy for keeping Foundation
members informed.

> Yet, here you are publically tossing out false information based on
> your imperfect perception.

It's probably not a great strategy to scold people for not knowing
what you know, when you're failing to document what you know...

Anway, I'm not sure what's false about my statement, but this is kind
of my point precisely!

I don't know what the Trustees do. I don't mean in general; I know you
approve funds, etc. But like, what things have you actually done in
the last $timeframe?

The Council has monthly meetings with logs and summaries. Trustees
have one annual meeting. Obviously the Trustees do things between
annual meetings. How can anyone stay informed?

Maybe you could just clearly state what you've done towards the goal
of merging the Foundation into an umbrella org? (I thought that at
least at one point you were against that, so I'm not even completely
sure of your position!) Maybe you're all working tirelessly to this
end, but if you are, I'm almost completely unaware of it, and I don't
think that's for lack of attention on my part.

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/index.php?title=Foundation:FoundationFutureState&diff=929271&oldid=890055