On 06/03/2009 08:07 PM, DeWitt Clinton:
Well, there's a lot of history there. I was directly involved in
bringing Google to the OIDF, and I felt strongly about the importance
of OpenID to the web, so at the time I was a natural fit to represent
Google on the board. But it was outside my day to day
responsibilities at Google -- I did it more as an individual that
happened to be filling a corporate seat sponsored by Google.
Eric, on the other hand, was thinking about and working on these types
of things full time for his job at Google, and he was making quite an
impression on the community in the process, so he not surprisingly was
elected to hold a community seat when we held the elections. After a
certain point it was clear to everyone that since Eric was doing this
as part of his real job at Google, and I wasn't, the most natural
thing to do was hand the Google seat to him.
I might even have run for a community seat myself, but I've been
focusing my spare-time energy elsewhere of late (like the Open Web
Foundation), and didn't want to run for a seat if I didn't think I
could contribute enough.
If people feel strongly about this, change the bylaws to say that a
community seat can't be filled by an employee of a company already on
the board. Though this has risks, too -- it would be a shame to lose
good people simply because of the signature on their paycheck.
Probably better to simply elect community representatives that we feel
are acting in the interest of the community first, and not worry so
much about their employer (which as we've seen with several
representatives already, is a temporary state anyway).
Thanks for your clarification and my memory more or less confirms this
as well. Nevertheless I believe that there should be such a by-law for
the benefit of everybody - including never letting such potential
conflicts and accusations thereof happen in first place. I think it's
simply clean governance and correct in the interest of the members
(including sustaining members).
Regards
Signer: Eddy Nigg, StartCom Ltd. <http://www.startcom.org>
Jabber: [email protected] <xmpp:[email protected]>
Blog: Join the Revolution! <http://blog.startcom.org>
Phone: +1.213.341.0390
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