Background For the past couple of months, we have been working on setting up the governance infrastructure for Sugar Labs.
We have laid out the basics of the membership structure. Our members are our owners. In for profit organizations, owners invest their money in the expectation that they will have a positive return on their investment; the stock price goes up At Sugar Labs, instead of money, we ask our members to contribute their time and effort to improving the Sugar Labs ecosystem. Our members should receive a positive return on their investments. The value of their individual contributions increases because of Sugar Labs. Our members own Sugar Labs. As owners, they have control over the assets and direction of the project. Because of the transaction costs of large group decisions, our members elect an oversight board to represent their interests. The boards job is to direct and protect. The board directs the project by establishing goals and assigning resources to those goal. The board protects by insuring that the foundation is working towards the goals stated in our mission statement and vision. In for profit companies, the board appoints a Chief Executive Officer to oversee day to day operations. In not for profits, the CEO is typically referred to as the Executive Director. Executive Director The decision to have an Executive Director boils down to one question, 'Do the benefits of having a single point of control outweigh the risks of a single point of control?' Benefits 1. Fund raising. The single largest advantage of an Executive Director is their ability to raise money. This stems from the fact that people and companies that are in a position to donate money are more comfortable dealing with an individual than a group. 2. Public relations. The Executive Director can be the voice of the organization. He can become the canonical source of information about the foundation. 3. The buck stops here. The Executive Director's job is to execute the vision of the board. As a result, he is in a position to make the hard decisions. Risks 1. Philosophical. In the world of free and open source software, individual contributors can be philosophically opposed to the centralized control granted to the Executive Director. 2. Losing control. For an open source project to be successful, there must be a balance of power between the members (owners), the board (directors), and the Executive Director (manager). It is possible for strong Executive Directors to run roughshod over inexperienced, part time board members. 3. Herding cats. There can be significant tensions between a manager who is responsible for executing the vision of the board and volunteer contributors. As always, I appreciate your feedback on other benefits and risks of having a Executive Director in an open source project. In a few days, I will form a recommendation on the value of an Executive Director to Sugar Labs based on the consensus of the list. _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
