[Evergreen-governance-l] Draft rules of governance for a more focused Foundation

[Dan Scott]

Hi Sylvia:

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:08:26AM -0400, Watson, Sylvia wrote:
> Without commenting one way or the other on the substance of Dan's proposal, I would like to ask a few questions and make one comment.
> 
> How does one get onto the Evergreen general mailing list?  Who controls the mailing list and are comments moderated; if so, by whom?  I'm not trying to imply anything, I'm just genuinely curious.  Other than Galen and Dan, are the governance committee members on the Evergreen mailing list?  I know the Indiana members are not and did not even know about the e-mail list until recently.  What would be the plan to ensure that all the various interested stakeholders know of this list so they can participate in the board nominations and voting if they so choose?  Is it every Evergreen community member for him/herself to figure it out or will someone be responsible for outreach and getting the word out about the e-mail list?

I'm a bit concerned if there are people who want to govern the
Evergreen project who haven't spent enough time on
http://evergreen-ils.org to find the "Mailing lists" link at the top of
the page, or to find answers on Google that point to the Evergreen
General mailing list. That seems like a fairly reasonable barrier to
participation.
 
> I would also like to express a point of view regarding the requirement of unanimous votes.  Requiring unanimous votes gives a lot of power to one individual on the board/committee.  Which means the majority's will is not always done.  Rather, the minority has total control.  What if 6 of the 7 board members want to expand the purview (stated purpose in the bylaws) of the Foundation, but the 7th doesn't.  That one person has the ability to stand in the way of the Foundation's forward progress.  I understand the goal is to prevent abuse, but I would argue that abuse is more likely to occur if one person has that much power.  The requirement of a supermajority is, in my opinion, sufficient to represent the will of the Evergreen community and inhibit abuse.  As Dan points out, these people have been voted in by the community and, theoretically, collectively represent the will of the community.

If I remember my draft correctly, the only unanimous votes that were
required were for adopting the rules of governance in the first place
(by the Interim Board members) and then for modifying the rules of
governance.

It is a fair point about the power of the minority. My goal in requiring
a unanimous vote was to make it difficult to change the rules of
governance, given that the scope for my alternate proposal was tightly
defined. Ergo, we do the work upfront to ensure that we have something
that works, and only change it if everyone agrees that it needs to be
changed. The constitution of our country works the same way; amendments
require unanimous consent from all of the provinces because changing
something so fundamental should not be a trivial exercise.
 
> There are a number of us representing competing interests and because of that the group has been unable to come to a unanimous consensus on several important issues.  I would argue that the only way you are going to get unanimous votes or unanimous consensus on major issues is if you have all members of like minds, and if that is the case then the board/committee is likely not representative of the various stakeholders.
> 

With a tight focus on protecting the legal assets of the Evergreen
project, I hope that we do have like minds. When the focus spreads to
encompass other operational activities, then I would expect a broader
range of opinions on those other matters. But again - my intention in
introducing a requirement for unanimous consent was only for changing
the rules of governance.

If nothing else, I thought it was at least a concept worth bringing up for
discussion.