Sun 30 Apr 2006, 10:03 PM CDT
Foundation thoughts
Okay, here are my thoughts about the upcoming elections, bylaws,
etcetera.
To the best of my knowledge, we've never voted on the bylaws. In principle it would suffice to have the trustees vote on it, but I'd really prefer that we have a general vote on them. We can combine that vote with the vote for trustees, presumably. That said, we may want to consider revising the bylaws some. Last year we decided that all active devs who'd been with Gentoo for one year were eligible to be foundation members, so our list of members is much larger than that of the Python Software Foundation, which served as the source for our current bylaws. For example, it seems unlikely that we're going to be able to attract a quorum of 1/3 of the members and the required annual meeting. Also, the current rule is that new members must be nominated by an existing member, a membership application has to be filed by the person wanting to be a member, and a majority of existing members must vote to approve a new member. Assuming that last year's system was more in line with what we want, then perhaps what we really want is a requirement that foundation membership be tied to Gentoo devship (presumably continuing the must-be-a-dev-for-a-year rule). A much more minor issue: the bylaws require a corporate seal; do we really need one? I suspect there are other things we're going to want to change, too.
As far as elections go, it would be good to have new trustees in place before our fiscal year ends (which is 30 June, I believe). This last year we started with 13 trustees, and we finish the year having lost at least three, and several others have contributed rather little during the last year. I'd really like to see the number of trustees drop dramatically. The major issues for the upcoming trustees are going to be: (a) moving the corporation to a state that doesn't require a member to live there, (b) continuing to assert our intellectual property rights (thanks Swift for all of your work on this area), (c) move banking away from netbank, (d) make some sort of decision on copyright transfer, and (e) get some sort of real budget put together, and (f) other things that escape me right now. Of course, this list is fairly similar to last year's list, which is not so good, although during the last year we saw a complete transfer of all IP from Gentoo Technologies, Inc to the Foundation, seemant, ramereth, klieber, and dmwaters all worked with our legal folks to address copyright transfer issues, but it's such a complicated problem that we still lack a definitive solution (I believe), we have a funding process in place (thanks to spyderous, if I recall correctly), and we even have the Gentoo name registered (in the US) as a registered trademark. Nonetheless, I really think the foundation would benefit from having a much smaller number of trustees, like five, with an expectation that if a trustee becomes inactive a new trustee takes that person's place in a reasonably short period of time.
I'm sure there's more that I should mention, but that's all that I can think of right now.
To the best of my knowledge, we've never voted on the bylaws. In principle it would suffice to have the trustees vote on it, but I'd really prefer that we have a general vote on them. We can combine that vote with the vote for trustees, presumably. That said, we may want to consider revising the bylaws some. Last year we decided that all active devs who'd been with Gentoo for one year were eligible to be foundation members, so our list of members is much larger than that of the Python Software Foundation, which served as the source for our current bylaws. For example, it seems unlikely that we're going to be able to attract a quorum of 1/3 of the members and the required annual meeting. Also, the current rule is that new members must be nominated by an existing member, a membership application has to be filed by the person wanting to be a member, and a majority of existing members must vote to approve a new member. Assuming that last year's system was more in line with what we want, then perhaps what we really want is a requirement that foundation membership be tied to Gentoo devship (presumably continuing the must-be-a-dev-for-a-year rule). A much more minor issue: the bylaws require a corporate seal; do we really need one? I suspect there are other things we're going to want to change, too.
As far as elections go, it would be good to have new trustees in place before our fiscal year ends (which is 30 June, I believe). This last year we started with 13 trustees, and we finish the year having lost at least three, and several others have contributed rather little during the last year. I'd really like to see the number of trustees drop dramatically. The major issues for the upcoming trustees are going to be: (a) moving the corporation to a state that doesn't require a member to live there, (b) continuing to assert our intellectual property rights (thanks Swift for all of your work on this area), (c) move banking away from netbank, (d) make some sort of decision on copyright transfer, and (e) get some sort of real budget put together, and (f) other things that escape me right now. Of course, this list is fairly similar to last year's list, which is not so good, although during the last year we saw a complete transfer of all IP from Gentoo Technologies, Inc to the Foundation, seemant, ramereth, klieber, and dmwaters all worked with our legal folks to address copyright transfer issues, but it's such a complicated problem that we still lack a definitive solution (I believe), we have a funding process in place (thanks to spyderous, if I recall correctly), and we even have the Gentoo name registered (in the US) as a registered trademark. Nonetheless, I really think the foundation would benefit from having a much smaller number of trustees, like five, with an expectation that if a trustee becomes inactive a new trustee takes that person's place in a reasonably short period of time.
I'm sure there's more that I should mention, but that's all that I can think of right now.
Sat 29 Apr 2006, 10:55 AM CDT
Still around
Just a note that I'm still around. Indeed, I've clearly decided that I
now have too much free time on my hands, since I've volunteered to be a
mentor for Summer of Code students. It should be fun!
Foundation elections should be happening sometime "soon", which means a lot needs to be done to make that process be not quite so dead. I'll have an update on that later this weekend.
Foundation elections should be happening sometime "soon", which means a lot needs to be done to make that process be not quite so dead. I'll have an update on that later this weekend.