On 6/20/2014 5:46 PM, [email protected] wrote:
This evolution in the project is why we're having this discussion about a
volunteer agreement now. There was a time when the growth and health of the
community happened organically without support from any organization and we're
now moving into having Mozilla invest in a more intentional, systematic way to
connect people to the project and keep them involved.
I'm very excited that we're moving into a place where we're being more
intentional and there will be great things about this -- see the recent
community Town Hall for more details.
One of the things we need to be intentional about now is making sure that
potential new volunteers have a basic understanding of how Mozilla operates and
that they know about the rules that exist. And we want to be able to make sure
potential new volunteers have seen that information and we're all on the same
page.
I think the big problem that everyone here has with the "agreement" is
that it's phrased as an agreement with all sorts of legal language, and
yet it's not actually a binding legal contract.
So overall, I think the current proposal is a big mistake, and you need
to go back to the drawing board and come up with something different. I
think it should probably be rewritten to be a statement of expectations
and responsibilities:
* Mozilla volunteers should read and understand the participation
guidelines...
* Mozilla expects all volunteers to behave in a respectable...
* Volunteers who violate these guidelines will be asked to cease
participation as a Mozilla volunteer.
We're doing the work now to be very clear about when someone crosses a
threshold into becoming a volunteer.
I understand why this is important in terms of us measuring success. I
don't see why this is necessary from the perspective of a volunteer. You
start out doing a little, and if it works well you gradually increase
participation. At some point we count you as "a volunteer" according to
our spreadsheets, but otherwise why does it matter?
We've compared this document to other similar documents in other volunteer
based organizations and it seems very friendly and light weight to me (compare
this to the 50-page Red Cross document referenced earlier in the thread).
Presumably the red cross has very specific legal requirements for people
who may be working with personal health data. To the extent that our
volunteers also have access to personal data, we should also have an
agreement like that. It should be legally binding, even. But this
agreement is not that, and conflating them is just confusing the issue.
In terms of next steps, I propose putting this on the agenda at the next Grow
Mozilla meeting and anyone here who still has questions, comments or concerns
should go there.
It seems that you are not addressing the issues raised in this
newsgroup, and are instead punting those issues to a meeting which not
everyone can attend. I think this attitude is disrespectful of the
people who have commented at your first proposal and is a terrible way
to make decisions.
--BDS
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