[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Draft rules of governance for Evergreen Software Foundation - for discussion

[Dan Scott]

Hi Ben:

On Wed, Oct 06, 2010 at 05:41:53PM -0400, Ben Shum wrote:
>  Hi Dan,
> 
> Under Section 2.2 (Eligibility),
> 
> Part (b) states: "An individual library may become a Member even though
> it is part of a consortium that is a Member if the library demonstrates
> that it contributes to Evergreen in a significant and sustained way,
> other than being a member of the consortium that is running Evergreen."
> 
> Part (c) states: "An individual person may become a Member even though
> he/she represents or is affiliated with a business or organization that
> is a Member if the individual demonstrates that he/she contributes to
> Evergreen in a significant and sustained way, other than the way the
> business or organization is contributing to Evergreen."
> 
> Part (d) states: "Membership eligibility is an individual determination.
> While contributions made in the course of employment will be considered,
> they will generally be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than
> accruing to all employees of a “contributing” corporation. The
> Nomination and Membership Development Committee will oversee membership
> applications."
> 
> --
> 
> Based on part (b) and part (c), with an example scenario: let's say Ms.
> Jane Smith works as a system administrator for the Magical Library,
> which runs Evergreen ILS. Part (b) would seem to support that the
> Magical Library could pursue membership on grounds of being a library
> operating Evergreen. 

Correct. Per 2.6 (b), Magical Library would have a membership and would
have somebody act to represent its membership (unless the Magical
Library somehow has consciousness and a voice of its own, which would be
truly magical).

> But part (c) would seem to support that Jane Smith
> could become a member through her own activities in the Evergreen
> community.

Correct - assuming that Jane Smith contributed to the Evergreen
community in the form of community support, Web site development,
writing documentation, creating detailed bug reports, contributing code,
etc., then she would be eligible for membership based on her
contributions.

> Then, with part (d) it seems to say that it's preferred for
> individual attribution, rather than organizational? 

The goal is to recognize libraries (note: the wording in (b) is "an
individual library") who employ people who contribute to the improvement
of Evergreen. Membership provides some measure of control over the
Evergreen Software Foundation, so those individuals who put significant
effort into improving Evergreen should be given some say over the future
direction of their project. Employing those people is a good thing, too,
but as those contributors move around (say Jane moves from Magical
Library to Fantasy Library), the contributor should always keep their
membership, while Magical Library would lose their membership and
Fantasy Library would gain a membership (unless Magical Library had
other contributors on their payroll, in which case they would continue
to keep their membership too; and if Fantasy Library already had a John
Doe awesome Evergreen contributor on its payroll, then it wouldn't get a
second library membership).

> Or is part (d)
> applied primarily towards employees of support companies for Evergreen?

No, it is directed towards the people who continue to improve Evergreen
as a whole. Without those people (whether they are volunteers, or
employed by libraries and directed to put a percentage of their time
towards improving Evergreen the project, or whether they are employed by
a support company, or some combination thereof), our project dies. We
want to encourage more people to contribute towards Evergreen, and we
want to encourage libraries to enable their employees to contribute
their efforts to the project.

> Or does the wording allow for all these things to be "true" given
> certain circumstances and with approval by the membership committee?

Right, I suppose as written the Nominating and Membership Development
Committee ultimately gets to decide what that means. In many other
organizations, a membership development committee would exist for the
purpose of getting as many members as possible (with the goal of
building a warchest out of membership feeds). For the Evergreen Software
Foundation, we also want to increase the number of members - but based
on the criteria in the existing draft, that's because more members mean
that more people are contributing directly (sweat equity) to the
project, or indirectly (libraries who provide employment for those
individuals), and it's not about money - no membership dues,
although (e) in that same section would give the Oversight Board
the ability to set dues at some point in the future.

> Just curious for some clarification on how to classify memberships
> according to the draft.

Does this help? It's my understanding of the results of our collective
discussion, at least.