Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
Jeff Fortin nekoh...@gmail.com wrote: ... The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 16h UTC. Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting: ... * Bountysource account for the Foundation ... While Bountysource is interesting, I also think that we need to be rather careful about adopting it. Two issues immediately spring to mind: 1. How will this affect our community culture? On the one hand, I feel that it is good for people to be able to earn money working on GNOME. On the other hand, we have a lot of volunteers who contribute out of principle or commitment. We should be sensitive to the prospect of established contributors feeling resentful at newbies working only for money, or the money distracting from our principles and values. 2. How will this affect our relationship with users? Let's say someone spends some money to have a bug fixed. The bug gets fixed and the money is paid to the developer who did the work. However, later, we decide that we didn't like the fix, or that it gets in the way of a bigger change we want to make. Suddenly we are in a tricky situation - whoever paid for the fix will be (understandably) not too happy to find out that it has been thrown out. I hope that we will look at all the possible angles before pursuing this. It would certainly be good to debate it. Allan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for OPW project ideas
[only foundation-list] On Sat, 2014-09-27 at 13:13 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: - Original Message - From: Germán Poo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org On Sat, 2014-09-27 at 11:45 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: - Original Message - From: Germán Poo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org To: Marina Zhurakhinskaya mari...@redhat.com Cc: GNOME Foundation foundation-list@gnome.org, desktop-devel-list desktop-devel-l...@gnome.org Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2014 11:23:34 AM Subject: Re: Call for OPW project ideas On Fri, 2014-09-26 at 23:48 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: Dear Foundation, The application process for the new round of Outreach Program for Women internships has recently started, and we are looking for people willing to mentor GNOME projects in this round. Because we only usually have a few participants in OPW, this round we would only like to offer projects that are most strategic for GNOME. These include, but are not limited to, projects in the area of privacy [1], developer experience, GTK+ [2], core experience, core applications [3], and web infrastructure. We would also like people to think ahead of time how they will be able to provide excellent mentorship to the interns before, during, and after the internship, and whether there is a larger project team the intern will be able to receive support from. Matthias Clasen, Allan Day, and Sriram Ramkrishna have kindly agreed to be a part of a cross-team triage committee for proposed project ideas. Please add ideas you are willing to mentor to the wiki page for the round [4] by early next week. Hi Marina, Will the mentors still be required to sign a document that makes them legally liable? Hi Germán, Yes. The legal liability is only for gross negligence, recklessness or intentional wrongdoing. This is covered on https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#Contracts This is not unique to OPW. GSoC has similar terms mentors have to agree to, which are much more broad - http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2014/org_admin_agreement . The difference is that the GSoC agreement is between the organization and Google, no mentor becomes legally liable (though, IANAL). By having agreements directly with mentors, we recognize that free software organizations that participate might only have a limited control over the mentors who participate. Is there other venues to address a possible issue? For example, requiring the organization to look for an alternate mentor in case of problem. Making legally liable a volunteer who is giving time and work for free is asymmetrical, where the volunteer has nothing to win, but a lot to lose. -- Germán Poo-Caamaño http://calcifer.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
OPW mentor agreement (was Re: Call for OPW project ideas)
Germán Poo-Caamaño asked: Will the mentors still be required to sign a document that makes them legally liable? On Sat, 2014-09-27 at 11:45 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya replied: Yes. The legal liability is only for gross negligence, recklessness or intentional wrongdoing. This is covered on https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#Contracts This is not unique to OPW. GSoC has similar terms mentors have to agree to, which are much more broad - http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2014/org_admin_agreement Germán further noted: The difference is that the GSoC agreement is between the organization and Google, no mentor becomes legally liable That might not protect you as much as you think. For example, I agreed to Conservancy's GSoC agreement on behalf of Conservancy mentors. Now, I'm an officer of Conservancy, and as such, if Conservancy is deemed liable, officers/directors can be on the hook. Conservancy of course has DO insurance, but IIRC Conservancy's policy doesn't protect me *anyway* if I engage in gross negligence, fraud, etc. So, ultimately, a promise of Conservancy not to engage in gross negligence is a promise for me not to do so anyway. It'll come right back to me in a lawsuit if I've actually engaged in gross negligence. Conservancy won't help me out of the situation (remember, in this hypothetical scenario, I'm guilty, so why would Conservancy help?). The DO insurance policy that Conservancy has will be useless to me, too. Thus, what difference does it make if I agree not to commit gross negligence? I'm not going to do it anyway! [0] Germán further added: For 100% volunteers, it is just taking a risk for free. As opposed to all the times you take that risk and *pay* the entity you take that risk for? I suppose most people don't realize this in our just click agree culture, but many of those ToS/TaC one agrees to on a regular basis -- be it for renting a car or hotel room, using Facebook, or a hundred other things -- cause you to agree you're liable for your own gross negligence and reckless behavior. Not only that, but most gross negligence and reckless behavior that results in real harm is likely criminally prosecutable anyway, and/or would be actionable in civil court by the intern against the mentor directly. So, *not* signing doesn't protect you from much, anyway. BTW, if a mentor didn't sign this, all it would mean is that *both* GF and the mentor could be sued for the mentor's bad actions, and the GF has no easy defense to get off the hook. But, is it really better for mentor (regardless of whether the accusations are false) to have GF stuck as a litigant with you? (It's not like they'd be required to pay for *your* defense in that case.) I played out some of those scenarios in my head just now, and I don't see how any outcome is better. In fact, I can think of scenarios where one is falsely accused and it's much better *for the accused* that GF isn't named in the suit. IANAL and TINLA, of course. [0] And, no, failing to answer your intern's email in a timely fashion (yes, we've all done it) is *not* gross negligence. If, somehow, you end up standing with your intern right on the edge of a giant cliff, and you encourage your intern to get closer than is allowed by the park service because the view is totally better, and your intern falls, you're probably in trouble. But, I don't think visits to the Grand Canyon are part of OPW, though, nor do I think we'll encourage our interns to jump the guard rail if we do plan such a trip. -- -- bkuhn ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Call for OPW project ideas
On 2014-09-29 13:13, Germán Poo-Caamaño wrote: [only foundation-list] On Sat, 2014-09-27 at 13:13 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: - Original Message - From: Germán Poo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org On Sat, 2014-09-27 at 11:45 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: - Original Message - From: Germán Poo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org To: Marina Zhurakhinskaya mari...@redhat.com Cc: GNOME Foundation foundation-list@gnome.org, desktop-devel-list desktop-devel-l...@gnome.org Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2014 11:23:34 AM Subject: Re: Call for OPW project ideas On Fri, 2014-09-26 at 23:48 -0400, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote: Dear Foundation, The application process for the new round of Outreach Program for Women internships has recently started, and we are looking for people willing to mentor GNOME projects in this round. Because we only usually have a few participants in OPW, this round we would only like to offer projects that are most strategic for GNOME. These include, but are not limited to, projects in the area of privacy [1], developer experience, GTK+ [2], core experience, core applications [3], and web infrastructure. We would also like people to think ahead of time how they will be able to provide excellent mentorship to the interns before, during, and after the internship, and whether there is a larger project team the intern will be able to receive support from. Matthias Clasen, Allan Day, and Sriram Ramkrishna have kindly agreed to be a part of a cross-team triage committee for proposed project ideas. Please add ideas you are willing to mentor to the wiki page for the round [4] by early next week. Hi Marina, Will the mentors still be required to sign a document that makes them legally liable? Hi Germán, Yes. The legal liability is only for gross negligence, recklessness or intentional wrongdoing. This is covered on https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen#Contracts This is not unique to OPW. GSoC has similar terms mentors have to agree to, which are much more broad - http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2014/org_admin_agreement . The difference is that the GSoC agreement is between the organization and Google, no mentor becomes legally liable (though, IANAL). By having agreements directly with mentors, we recognize that free software organizations that participate might only have a limited control over the mentors who participate. Is there other venues to address a possible issue? For example, requiring the organization to look for an alternate mentor in case of problem. That is a mechanism we certainly would use, but it doesn't protect the Foundation in the extreme cases that the agreement is written for. Making legally liable a volunteer who is giving time and work for free is asymmetrical, where the volunteer has nothing to win, but a lot to lose. On the other hand, mentors have a tremendous amount of control over the internship. What situations are you worried about? When I read gross negligence, recklessness or intentional wrongdoing I think of situations like: * a mentor stalks and harasses an intern * an intern tells a mentor that she feels like she is in danger of imminent harm due to behavior by other contributors and the mentor doesn't tell anyone or do anything. * a mentor physically attacks an intern at a conference Also I should note that we originally thought to put the legal infrastructure in place because a donor asked for it as part of their diligence related to reviewing the program. karen ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] If the GNOME Foundation is considering inviting members of the community to use Bountysource to communicate with the Foundation, that raises two ethical issues: * Privacy. This would result in giving Bountysource people's personal data, which it shouldn't have any right to know. * Free software. Many web sites require visitors to run nonfree software to use some or even all of the functionality. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html. Does Bountysource work without nonfree JS? I don't know, but one can't presume that. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
