4:21 p.m.
> [...] Keith Packard [...]
If you know of textual summaries of these issues, that’d be great.
:-)
(I’d also like to listen to this episode, but time is scarce.)
I agree: I seldom fully listen to a full podcast, since it does not fit in to little
interstitial spaces while waiting for compilation :-) But this was so good (both for
governance and for technical matters) that I happily took the time for the whole thing.
Still, I can summarize a couple of things, which I touched on before: on governance he
points out that the FSF model is an echo chamber for its founder and is not a viable model
for the long term. Proper governance cannot be secret and has to have a way of removing
toxic leaders, so the BDFL model does not work. He points out that x.org/freedesktop.org
used the Gnome foundation as a model.
> Make sure that we have a convincing placeholder for governance
[...],
What would you write in that governance page today?
It should define our scope, and point out what direction we're considering the Gnome
foundation model for governance.
For example (totally spitballing here):
"""
The GNU Assembly is moving toward a small but real governance model, founded on adherence
to the GNU social contract and our code of conduct.
Governance comes up when specific decisions have to be made about GNU as a whole, such as
defining the level of coherence of GNU packages and handling possible funding and legal
matters.
We are in early stages of formulating a governance model, but at this time we can state
that we look at the Gnome Foundation as an example, and that our goal is to allow for
transparent decision-making, and to have a healthy turnover of decision-makers that avoids
focus on a single person.
"""
(I'm not too happy with the phrasing of that last sentence, but something like that
might be needed.)
Finally, vis-a-vis my (and other) comments on Software Freedom Conservancy, it appears
that there are some people who have had difficult experiences with them in the past. I
think there is no urgency on that, but we should certainly make sure that everything is
resolved and well-understood so that nobody feels unhappy with an eventual fiscal sponsor.
If we don't hold monies then we might just be able to use their public-facing wisdom
about legal matters.