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

[Alec Warner]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 11:26 AM, Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> 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.
>
> 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.
>

Er, sorry, a 100% hands off solution is *not* going to be effective, sorry.

-A


>
> 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.
>
> 2) We could also decide that having Comrel under the Foundation is a bad
> idea, but we could do other things. Many of these could be not direct
> governance, but merely oversight to insure that the governing Gentoo bodies
> are acting in a legal way.
>
> 3) We could decide the risk is worth it; secure insurance, and do nothing.
>
> 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?
>
> Ultimately that is the question I want addressed.
>
> -A
>
>
>> In short and sweet summary:
>>
>> - The Council was made to be the team leading Gentoo, we have elections
>> for that reason.
>> - Recruitment should get new wonderful people as Developers, either by
>> inviting them or by vetting them.
>> - Comrel is offloading from the council the management of conflicts
>> between developers. Incidentally it had to manage also troublemakers,
>> creeps, and other horrible people that the recruitment process failed to
>> recognize as such (luckily happened really few times).
>> - Q/A is offloading from the council the management of day-by-day
>> technical issues and possibly prevent people not so skilled from destroy
>> systems.
>> - Foundation should just care of money on behalf of the council and not
>> interfere with the community.
>>
>> Giving the Foundation more power than act as financial operations is a
>> quite bad idea to me.
>>
>> lu
>>
>>
>