[Evergreen-governance-l] Proposed New Governance Changes

Thu Oct 21 06:49:12 EDT 2010

Morning, all, 

There are two points I'd like to make about this discussion. 

1. I think that the most important function that the proposed Foundation can perform is to hold and protect Evergreen's intellectual property assets. Copyrights are currently held by many disparate stakeholders with very different goals, and in some (perhaps many) cases, the copyright to certain sections of the core code is unclear, or at least unmarked. Having a community-run, trusted third party with the sole goal of holding and protecting those assets in full would remove all actual and potential conflicts of interest and would probably go a long way to address the trust issues around Equinox's control of who may or may not commit core code. 

2. On that last point, I think we're all (including Equinox) in agreement that the Evergreen project needs a more distributed volunteer (or at least user-agency-sponsored) developer base. It sounds like the Software Freedom Conservancy strongly agrees and probably would not have invited us to join were it not for the niche Evergreen fills. I think it might be beneficial to invite Bradley Kuhn (or another representative of the SFC) to one of our monthly calls to discover how joining the SFC would help us build a more diverse developer base and allay some of the concerns around these control issues. 

Overall, I think if the Foundation has the sole (initial?) purpose of holding in common and protecting our community's assets as Dan suggests and Lori supports, the rest of the community's concerns, many of which are shared by PINES, could be addressed in other ways. 

Chris 

Chris Sharp 
PINES Program Manager 
Georgia Public Library Service 
1800 Century Place, Suite 150 
Atlanta, Georgia 30345 
(404) 235-7147 
csharp at georgialibraries.org 
http://pines.georgialibraries.org/ 

From: "Lori Bowen Ayre" <lori.ayre at galecia.com> 
To: "Jim Corridan (ICPR)" <jcorridan at icpr.in.gov> 
Cc: evergreen-governance-l at list.georgialibraries.org 
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 8:35:29 PM 
Subject: Re: [Evergreen-governance-l] Proposed New Governance Changes 

I'm in favor of Dan's more limited (and crucial) role for the Foundation. 

I'm pretty sure the Foundation shouldn't have a say in who gets to commit code. That's the job of the existing code committers who must be able to establish trust in each other to work effectively. I cannot imagine a scenario where the existing team of code committers would WANT to allow someone into their world and we (the Foundation) would have a reason to say no. So having the developers ask the Oversight Board when they can invite someone in seems like a pretty paternalistic role that wouldn't go over well with our developers. 

*Maybe* there is a role for the Oversight Board to arbitrate a decision in which the Committers denied access to a would-be-Committer. But even there, I'd say "arbitrate" versus override a decision would be the wise course. 

I CAN imagine the Foundation recognizing that money needed to be raised to fund development that would help the product (e.g. fund something that is some internal component that will make all the difference but since it isn't a sexy feature, no one is sponsoring that development). That seems like an appropriate role for the Foundation members. 

I'm wondering if what you are really feeling is needed is more transparency about how enhancement requests and new feature decisions get made, how long-term development decisions are made, and how the user community can influence those decisions. I think everyone wants that. But I think that's a separate discussion. 

Attached is an interesting article documenting how Mozilla and Apache operate. I think we are more like the Apache example than the Mozilla example. It is a useful read because you can see the unique relationship of developers to the community. And it is very different from any model any of us has likely dealt with before... 

Lori 

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Corridan, Jim (ICPR) < jcorridan at icpr.in.gov > wrote: 

Dan 

Would that mean that Equinox and their contractors control/authorize the code? Each independent consortia or library is disconnected from any unified Evergreen, and theoretically someone would donate money to support the fostering and protection of Evergreen assets. I'd like to aim for more and I guess I have a different vision, one where there is some structure, though not necessarily tremendous authority, that can pull the community together and communicate effectively to all interested entities. 

Do we think it would be best over time to have a limited foundation, a separate international users group will likely develop, and a third group doing code committing? Personally, I prefer a unified governance structure than potentially multiple separate and competing entities. 

Jim 
________________________________________ 
From: Dan Scott [ dan at coffeecode.net ] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 5:14 PM 
To: Corridan, Jim (ICPR) 
Cc: evergreen-governance-l at list.georgialibraries.org 

Subject: Re: [Evergreen-governance-l] Proposed New Governance Changes 

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 04:05:05PM -0400, Corridan, Jim (ICPR) wrote: 
> Governance Group: 
> 
> Attached is a revision of the Rules of Governance. The revisions reflect comments from the two most recent meetings and an attempt to have the Foundation serve as the single unified organization for Evergreen. In addition to some minor language clean up, the major changes to this version of the Rules of Governance are: 
> 
> * Clarification that one of the Foundation's purposes is to serve as the community's user's group 
> * A dues structure has been added. The dues are low enough ($10 for individuals and $100 for institutions) that contributors should not balk at having to pay to support the foundation, whether that contributor is a board member, developer, committee member, library, etc. 
> * A Code Committing Committee has been added in recognition of the comments made by the Software Conservancy (about Equinox) and various governance committee members in recent meetings, so that the Foundation will have some input with regard to Evergreen code 
> * Membership is open to anyone who wants to join and is willing to pay the membership fee. 
> * Eligibility criteria for board membership now includes the language that was originally required for Evergreen Foundation Membership. 
> 
> Probably by December we need to come to some sort of agreement so that we have an authoritative board with an established Chairperson who will have the authority to sign the agreement with SFC on behalf of the Foundation, and also so there is time to get the committees up and running in preparation for the elections at the annual meeting, among other things. Let's keep in mind that the board (both the Initial Board and regular Oversight Board) does have the power to modify the Rules of Governance in the immediate and long term future if something isn't working. 
> 

These are significant changes, and I don't agree with them. I have a 
counter proposal; I suggest we pare down the scope of the Foundation to 
just one purpose: 

* foster and protect the Evergreen assets 

If the Foundation holds the trademarks, domain names, and some 
copyright for those individuals / institutions that wish to transfer 
their copyright, and it is under the umbrella of the Conservancy, then 
no single organization can hijack the project - and that's the primary 
concern, right? 

Beyond that, I think we've fallen victim to scope creep. Every other 
goal currently claimed by the rules of governance could and should 
happen outside of the Foundation. 

Dan 
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