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

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 02:17:47PM -0400, Joe Atzberger wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 1:05 PM, Lori Bowen Ayre <lori.ayre at galecia.com>wrote:
> 
> > I think we didn't nail this down because we don't feel nailed down about
> > it!
> >
> > The question is: should a library be able to be a voting member (one vote)
> > if the extent of their contribution to the community is simply to use the
> > Evergreen system being run by their consortium.
> >
> 
> My sense is, yes.  They have a legitimate stake in the project.  And it
> won't be as if most institutions that are concerned enough to exercise their
> vote will stay otherwise uninvolved with the project.  The Koha community
> has several prominent examples of people who started as "just users" and end
> up as regular contributors.

I believe that we need to encourage more participation in and
contribution to the Evergreen community, and that the currently drafted
membership rules are one small way to encourage that.

I don't see what relation your Koha example has to the proposed
membership rules, unless you think that the person would have said to
themselves "I'm just a user and not a member, therefore I'm not going to
contribute"...  which seems unlikely to me.

For your scenario, in the rules as currently drafted, the contributor
would become eligible to become a member, and the library that employs
the contributor would also become eligible to become a member. In the
currently proposed model, membership is a reward/incentive (slim though
it might be) for being an active participant in the project. That
ensures that when members vote, they have a legitimate stake (in the
form of having contributed effort / resources) in the project, rather
than just a passive role. And further, as only members are eligible to
be elected Board members, it ensures that the Board would be made up of
people who have participated actively.

Take the requirement for active contribution away, and the meaning of
membership becomes watered down significantly.

> Also it is important to note that the Foundation really will *not* govern
> development, in terms of technical choices or overall direction.  So the

Right. 1.2(b) lays out the purposes of the Foundation - governing
technical choices or development direction is not one of those purposes.

> potential for it to turn into a User Group Wishlist/Gripefest should be
> limited.  It should be allowed to focus on long term issues.  That makes the
> question of a User Group is somewhat separate, I think.  Unless there are
> some resources pooled for it, I don't see any reason to formalize
> UserGroupness now, and at least until after the Foundation is established.

Right, there are no barriers to participating in the community. You
don't have to be a member of the Foundation to monitor the mailing lists
/ read blogs and newsletters / watch the commit log, or to start
contributing to the community. That openness to participation won't
change if/when the Evergreen Software Foundation is formalized; if it
does, then I won't want to be a member of that foundation.