On Jun 17, 2005, at 2:49 PM, Stefane Fermigier wrote:
Paul Everitt wrote:
Other foundations approach things a bit differently. (I did quite
a bit of research on this for the Plone Foundation.)
Eric has done some research recently on the different successful
Open Source / Free Software foundations out there that have the
mission to develop and promote great software.
We're looking for a model that is just as acceptable for the single
developers (who are a very key elements in the community, and
provide some of the best work around - see Stefan or Philip for
instance, but there are many others whitout whom Zope and specially
Zope3 would not exist as we know them today) but also for the
companies and organisations that depend on Zope for their business
and are willing to commit ressources to the development of the
software (this includes software development houses like Zope Corp,
Infrae, Nuxeo and 10s of others, but also companies or universities
or non-profit that depend on Zope for their ongoing operation -
like Chalmers university or like the SD houses customers).
:^)
IMHO, "vendor-neutral" means, in this context, that the Foundation
must take into account the interests of all the stakeholders
(individual hackers, vendors, customers), and shouldn't be
interpreted as "vendor-free".
The governance model should take that into account, and not limit
itself to "only individuals are members" (of course, companies are
represented by individuals, but what happens if the individual in
question leaves a member company for another?).
First, let's agree that this isn't pre-decided. That the community
will get the governance model it wants. Agree?
Second, can you find examples that support this? For example, here's
what Apache says:
http://apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles
"""
All of the ASF including the board, the other officers, the
committers, and the members, are participating as individuals. That
is one strength of the ASF, affiliations do not cloud the personal
contributions.
"""
Here's what GNOME Foundation says:
http://foundation.gnome.org/membership/
"""
Membership eligibility is an individual determination: while
contributions made in the course of employment will be considered,
they will generally be ascribed to the individuals involved, rather
than accruing to all employees of a "contributing" corporation.
"""
These are two very successful open source projects. However, there
is nothing to suggest that our culture is the same as these others.
What's most important is that the rules are defined by the
community. Let's ensure that the bootstrapping group is representative.
--Paul
_______________________________________________
Zope-Dev maillist - Zope-Dev@zope.org
http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev
** No cross posts or HTML encoding! **
(Related lists -
http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce
http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope )
