[Evergreen-governance-l] Proposed New Governance Changes

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Oct 21, 2010, at 9:56 AM, Williamson, Cynthia wrote:
> I too can see both sides but am firmly in favour of starting the Foundation with "option 1".  We're not carving everything in stone and saying this is all we will do for now and forever.  Committees like communications, user groups, etc can all be formed as part of the work of the Foundation at the beginning.  We would do well to remember that we haven't been elected (not that there's anything wrong with what we're doing, someone had to get the ball rolling)... I'd like to see some more community involvement in all of the other stuff rather than us trying to carve it all out right at the start.  I think that stewarding the assets is the most important reason to get this Foundation up and running right now.  All of those other good purposes will come & they can come under the Foundation even if we don't do it all right now.

Having the Foundation start out with the primary (or sole) purpose of holding assets like the trademark and DNS registrations and existing as an assignee for some of the copyright has the virtue we all agree that this is a necessary function of the foundation.  Keeping the initial purpose limited means less for us (and the SFC and the broader Evergreen community) to hash out, meaning that we can get it started sooner rather than later, but does not preclude expanding the purpose (or setting up a separate users' and developers' group) later.  As I see it, I think we can achieve consensus on the Foundation-as-asset-holder via conference call and email and plan on discussing the other activities in person at the Evergreen conference.

DIG has made great strides as a self-organized group of contributors, and I have high hopes that the website committee's relaunch will be successful as well.  While I can certainly see the benefit of an entity that can centralize resources to get some things done, particularly for important but unsexy projects, it need not be the sole locus of such efforts.  In fact, I could see a great benefit if a users' and developers' group, be it part of the foundation or not, started out simply as a clearinghouse of information about things that are going on in Evergreen-land -- but that's a digression.

Regards,

Galen
--
Galen Charlton
VP, Data Services
Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
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