Re: [steering-discuss] Updated draft of the Community Bylaws
Hello everyone, Following our confcall of Saturday, I would first like to express my apologies for my message on the status of our community bylaws. At the moment our community bylaws are *almost* good. Some people here and elsewhere have expressed a strong opinion on the clause on racism and xenophobia; it will be replaced according to the discussion that have taken place here. Much in the same sense, the community bylaws are expected to be amended in the following months in a minimal way -and mostly for formal grounds- because of the legal and formal requirements induced by the incorporation of our foundation. I cannot at this stage point to anything specific, but there might be a change in names, for instance, Board of Directors might be renamed Board of Trustees because that's how the local law would want it, etc. This does leave us with the following status: - Community Bylaws can be, after modification of the racism clause, be considered as the Final Draft, a sort of Release Candidate; it's almost final, but not quite. - We will enable these bylaws just after we've properly incorporated and made any relevant formal change to them. Until then, we continue as we have done before, but obviously, what we already wrote can be progressively implemented, and taken inspiration from; we will see more and more teams being formed, etc. - It is not -unless it's absolutely necessary (note the absolutely in my sentence) desired to have people coming up with more and more modifications or points. Our bylaws are very much stable at the moment and we won't rewrite them with some new ideas. Please accept my apologies for the confusion on this topic, and please bear with us for some more time until we have completed the legal stage of the community development. Thank you, -- Charles-H. Schulz Founder Steering Committee Member, The Document Foundation. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org List archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/steering-discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [steering-discuss] Updated draft of the Community Bylaws
A few comments about the last comments: 1st: Yes, the negatives (racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political intolerance) are covered by the positives, if we were driven by common sense, but unfortunately this is not always the case, and I feel that we should maintain the sentence about the negatives. It makes me feel more comfortable. 2nd: Membership application: I think that we should leave the sentence about the 3 and 6 months, although we all know that being volunteers we cannot make any total commitment to the project. We all know that we can die sometimes (and being the oldest member, I'm closer that any one else), but I don't think that we should consider this when we commit. Also, I think that we need the rule of 3/6 months to avoid conflicts on normal cases, being ready to break the rule when someone makes a very significant contribution (which might happen, I think, in development, as I've never seen anyone making such a contribution in marketing as we need time to show that we have ideas and competence). 3rd: Project leads: of course, reputation is not a title attribution, but we should thin about some governance and organization, because this is going to be the only way to grow the project and make it successful. I have been in the IT industry for 30 years, and before 1981 I was a manager in different organizations. Good management makes a difference, and good management is extremely difficult to find (people @ Novell has a huge experience of lame management, and Sun was a benchmark for lame management). Good managers have a personal reputation and are natural leaders, and I think that we should aim to have them in place. -- Italo Vignoli italo.vign...@gmail.com Mobile +39.348.5653829 VoIP: +39.02.320621813 Skype: italovignoli -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org List archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/steering-discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [steering-discuss] Updated draft of the Community Bylaws
Thanks to everyone for their work! Charles-H. Schulz wrote on 2010-12-06 17.20: Well spoken. And with that, I declare the Community Bylaws adopted (provided nobody from the SC punches me in the face right away)... -- Florian Effenberger flo...@documentfoundation.org Steering Committee and Founding Member of The Document Foundation Tel: +49 8341 99660880 | Mobile: +49 151 14424108 Skype: floeff | Twitter/Identi.ca: @floeff -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org List archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/steering-discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [steering-discuss] Updated draft of the Community Bylaws
Hi Some thoughts and questions from my personal experience: 1) I am a bit concerned of the definition of project: It looks like TDF will foster several software projects, which is fine for me, but then (may be I am a bit biased by OOo structure), how do we manage NLC, L10n, Marketing and other projects? Does software development include all these activities? 2) I really appreciate *oxygenation*. Letting a chairman ad aeternam in place is a source of trouble and will let him build strong and unbreakable ties with the BoD, the employees and selected sectarian members of the Foundation (the goodfellas), aiming to preserve his status and position and offering whatever is needed to keep support on him. A one or two year term with one further nominaton will ensure fresh air (sort of) to the TDF Chairmanship. The leaving chairman can be reconducted later, but only after another one took his place for at least xxx month. Oxygenation also improves governance and transparency. 3) About disputes: It seems that the disputes will be settled inside TDF by the BoD, then the Chairman. Question: Is it advisable, for the sake of transparency, to let the members decide as the upper instance? 4) On conflict of interest, I personnaly prefer 20% figure instead of 30%. 5) Should any member of the Membership Committee (MC) have a veto power? 5a) Oh, by the way, what is the decision process of the MC with respect to the aplication? votes by simple majority, 2/3 members, 4/5? 6) How many members will take place in the MC and how are they appointed, for how long, how often they meet? Are we going to allow memebers of the BoD, AB, and the Chariman to be in the MC? 7) If a Member stops contributing, such that the merit criteria are no longer met, membership status will be revoked after a certain period of time. Does it means that a founding member of the TDF will be revoked if he/she does not participate on a xxx period of time? Shall we give them a honorary membership (dangerous). Regards, Em 29-11-2010 15:23, Charles-H. Schulz escreveu: Hello everyone, Here is the latest version of the bylaws: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/CommunityBylaws Latest change include mostly amended details on the Chairperson, as well as some more details on the BoD and a bit more clarity on salaries, expenses, etc. Since we've been discussing this for quite some time now, we would welcome your comments on this list until this week-end. If no strong veto is cast until then, we'll consider them to be adopted. David, as usual, please feel free to review the language... thanks! -- Olivier Hallot Steering Commitee The Document Foundation -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org List archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/steering-discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [steering-discuss] Updated draft of the Community Bylaws
Hi Charles, SC guys :-) On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 01:23, Charles-H. Schulz charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org wrote: David, as usual, please feel free to review the language... thanks! -- Charles-H. Schulz 1) Would it perhaps be useful to add a definition for the term community under section 1.1, Definitions? 2) Would it maybe be better to move the 4 definitions under section 3, Governance, to section 1.1, Definitions? I added a lot of reviewer's notes inline in the text because I felt it would be much easier for you to follow what I was saying. IMHO, the section on voting, section 5 at the end, needs quite a bit of attention. I took the liberty of trying to reorganize it somewhat, to make it clearer and more understandable... In reality, that has kind of seeded places where you might want to do more writing? I also worked on the format of the doc a bit, and inserted links where there were cross-references in the text... Perhaps we might be able to talk about all this in Friday's SC confcall? HTH. ;-) David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org List archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/steering-discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
