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

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Oct 08, 2010 at 02:15:39PM -0400, Joe Atzberger wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 12:14 PM, Dan Scott <dan at coffeecode.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 05:46:57PM -0400, Joe Atzberger wrote:
> > > > 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.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Yeah, that wouldn't make sense.  The question at hand regards
> > characterizing
> > > "non-contributing" users (NCUs).  Will there be a lot them?  Will they
> > bog
> > > us down?  Firstly, we're talking about a subset of "non-contributing"
> > users:
> > > the ones who will actually exercise the membership I would extend to them
> > > and use their vote.  Secondly, if you are active enough to be voting, I
> > > consider it quite likely you will become involved in other aspects of the
> > > project, whether that is sending code, building test systems, testing
> > > features, training users, hosting the conference, editing documentation,
> > > wrangling bugs, translating strings, helping new users with installs or
> > > whatever.  The Koha community illustrates this pretty well.
> >
> > > But basically, I see responsible membership in the Foundation as a form
> > of
> > > participation in the community itself, not as a payoff for some other
> > > activity.  Membership in the community should only require that you have
> > a
> > > legitimate interest in EG.
> >
> >
> > You're comparing an attempt to set up the rules of engagement for a
> > legal entity that handles financial and legal matters (the Evergreen
> > Software Foundation) to an informal community (the Koha community).
> >
> 
> Yes, notably one that has recently dealt with some of the exact same
> problems that this Foundation expects to deal with (or circumvent).  And to
> do that, they also had to determine membership eligibility and recognize
> votes.

I think that either you're misunderstanding me, or I'm misunderstanding
you. Perhaps it's the ambiguous use of the term "member". When you say
"Membership in the community should only require that you have a
legitimate interest in EG", I agree: membership in the Evergreen
community is wide open. That won't change with the creation of the
Evergreen Software Foundation. But yes, "Foundation members" would be a
subset of "community members" in the draft rules of governance.

The Evergreen Software Foundation would be a new legal entity with the
specific role of holding some assets, specifically the Evergreen logo,
trademark, copyright (for at least one organization that wants to assign
their copyright to the Foundation), domain name(s), and financial assets
(donations, revenues from conferences, sponsorships are some possible
avenues).

These assets need to be managed (and potentially enforced, in the case
of logo / trademark / copyright) by trusted community members. In many
non-profit organizations, all power is held by the governing board
- the traditional structure of a dozen or so people who can commit time
and energy on behalf of the community to act in their best interests.

The draft rules of governance for the Foundation distributes more power
to Foundation members, but the definition of membership tries to ensure
that that responsibility remains in the hands of trusted community
members.  Ergo the (as was pointed out in a previous email) requirements
for Foundation members to show sustained, significant contributions and
to be approved by the Nomination and Membership Development Committee.
As I previously pointed out, this is not a new model: it is used by the
Ubuntu and Sugar Labs projects.

> > Users who stake their enterprise on the utility and longevity of our
> > project
> 
> > are not, in my opinion, so much disposable solvent.  They are in many ways
> 
> I don't see where, in the draft rules of governance or in any
> previous emails in this thread, users were ever characterized in
> anything remotely close to this fashion.
> 
> The phrase was "the meaning of membership becomes watered down", water being
> the solvent.  Not that they were useless to EG overall, but that they were
> undesirable as Foundation membership.

Hmm. When you said "in my opinion" you implied that it was my opinion
that users were "so much disposable solvent". While that was a skilled
use of a rhetorical tactic that might cast me in a negative light, I
don't think that helps advance a serious discussion about rules of
governance.

I would never characterize water as something disposable; it's a
precious resource.

I would also not say that "Users who stake their enterprise on the
utility and longevity of our project" ... are "undesirable as Foundation
membership". I would say that, just as we do not allow anyone interested
in Evergreen to commit to the core repository (even new hires at
Equinox do not automatically get commit access), but rather require
developers to demonstrate sustained, significant contributions and an
understanding of the code base before being invited to become a
committer, I believe that there should be some demonstrated level of
dedication to and understanding of the Evergreen community before a
community member is invited to become a Foundation member.

> So these users, who may or may not be running EG themselves in house or
> accessing it via consortium or cloud service, operating with or without the
> assistance of 3rd party vendors, they have their enterprise staked on it.

If that's the case, then they should be contributing to this project
that they have staked their enterprise on, shouldn't they? I've tried,
several times, to point out that there are many possible ways to
contribute; participating on a committee is a contribution. Contributing
to a discussion about the draft rules of governance is a contribution.

On that note, if these users of Evergreen who have staked their
enterprise on Evergreen really are concerned about not being able to be
Foundation members based on the current definition of membership,
shouldn't they themselves be raising that concern?

>  They have a bona fide interest in the Foundation, but do they have a role?
>  Please correct me if I misstate it: your position seems to be "some do,
> some don't", depending on the level of in-house-ness or other qualitative
> measure of community contribution.  I'd prefer not to have a remainder of
> folks with critical stake and no role.

I have a bona fide interest in many, many organizations that directly
affect my life. And yet, if I don't participate in some way, I don't
expect to be trusted with the power to make significant changes to those
organizations. For example, I have significant interest in the public school
that my child attends - but I don't expect to show up at a board meeting
and be given a role as a voting member of the board just because I
reproduced five years ago and now my child goes to a school in that
district.

I _do_ expect my voice to be heard by trustees, and my concerns to be
taken seriously by those on the board - and if, over time, I participate
in board meetings and organize fund drives and whatnot, I would have a
solid base on which to make a case for becoming a trustee and having a
vote.

> Also, not speaking for ESI, but personally, if I was a vendor with many
> institutional players of various sizes utilizing my hosted solutions who
> were otherwise not represented, I would not want to be stuck having to
> synthesize their conflicting viewpoints for the purpose of representing them
> to the Foundation with *my* vote.

Again, those "institutional players" are not prohibited from
contributing to policy discussions, participating on committees, etc,
and thereby making significant, sustained contributions to Evergreen
that would qualify them for Foundation membership. So if they actually
care, they don't have to rely on their vendor or consortium to represent
their view - they can participate directly.

To start with, rather than you representing their theoretical concerns,
they should be representing their own actual concerns in this thread,
shouldn't they?

> Anyway, I think I've had my say on it.  I appreciate that people are taking
> it seriously at the outset.

At this point, I think I understand more about what you don't like about
the proposed rules of governance than what you like, or what you would
prefer to see.

Could you post a draft of an alternative governance structure that would
formalize your vision of how this legal entity would make decisions
about managing the various legal and financial assets on the Evergreen
community's behalf?