[Evergreen-governance-l] Notice of Evergreen Foundation Committee Meeting; April 30, 2011 (Proposed Message to Evergreen Community)

[Dan Scott]

Hi Karen:

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 12:44:01PM -0400, Karen Collier wrote:
> As an afterthought to my earlier email... 

Which, by the way, mirrored a number of my own thoughts... To answer one
question, about copyright, I see no reason why members of the DIG would
assign copyright to the Software Freedom Conservancy (the legal entity
that the Evergreen Oversight Board plans to join), just as there's no
reason for individual developers to assign copyright for their code to
the Conservancy.

And like you, I see the monthly Community Meetings as the place for
working groups to report on progress and identify areas where help or
collaboration is required.

> I've lost track of whether existing volunteer groups in the community
> are being officially subsumed within the new entity that Governance is
> forming or if that decision is being left for later. My two cents is

The Rules of Governance "Authority" section states:

"""
The Board is the central administrative body of the Project. The Board
is responsible for the overall policy and direction of the Project. The
Board does not generally implement practices, but instead relies on the
recognized community leadership within the Project – including but not
limited to the Documentation Interest Group, the Communication
Committee, and the Developer Team – to do so.
"""

Rather than a top-down governance organization, the Evergreen Oversight
Board is intended to be a body of last resort for decision making. This
philosophy is reinforced by the "Responsibility" section:

"""
The issues discussed by the Board generally fall into these categories:

  (a) Issues escalated from a committee or other subgroup in the Project
that has reached an impasse but requires a decision by informed consensus;

  (b) Issues that do not fall into the purview of any of the established
committees or other subgroups, but requires a decision by informed consensus;

  (c) Issues of strategic, as opposed to tactical, importance for the
Project that require leadership and vision from above the team or subproject
level to achieve; or,

  (d) Sensitive legal or personnel issues which require research and
discussion to protect the interests of the Project.
"""

As you can hopefully see (where I'm hoping that I've written those two
sections relatively clearly - but might have failed), the goal is for
the community to continue to function as a "do-ocracy" where interested
people can contribute to the Evergreen project in areas about which they
are passionate without having to ask for permission from the Board. The
Board's primary concern should be managing assets (including funds and
the usage of the Evergreen trademark, logo, domains, etc) if/when those
are contributed to the Conservancy, earmarked for the Evergreen project.

> that it would make sense for Governance to figure out what "rules" go
> along with being a committee within the Governance organization and
> then offer that option to existing community groups like DIG. The
> memberships of those groups could then vote on whether to become a
> committee or stay independent. I'm not suggesting that DIG or other
> existing groups wouldn't want to be part of this Governance movement,
> only that offering the choice could help with getting buy-in from
> current participants. Thoughts? 

Given the current Rules of Governance document, I don't think there is a
meaningful distinction between being a committee or staying independent.
The Conservancy will see the Evergreen Oversight Board as the official
representation of the Evergreen project for purposes of taking direction
on the management of its assets, so if/when an effort requires funding
(examples might include future conferences, or for buying a new domain
name), then the Board needs to direct the Conservancy to cut a cheque
accordingly. But with the possible exception of centralizing project
asset management, the goal I had when I wrote this draft of the Rules of
Governance was to avoid the disruption of those decentralized
results-oriented practices that had proven successful within the
Evergreen project so far - and the DIG is one of the examples of
successful efforts.

Does that make sense?