6:05 p.m.
Hi Mark,
You articulated it well:
> We have a bit of a problem in that we’re bootstrapping from an
> existing shallow pool of GNU maintainers (and contributors), so
> we’re inheriting the diversity imbalance currently present in
> GNU.
One possible solution is to expand our membership to include
participants in documentation and translation projects. If
someone has worked on a gcc manual or translation for the linux
documentation project, or for Guix, might they be welcome with
us? I think they are both stakeholders and valuable people to
their projects, and until we level the playing field for
programmers in underrepresented groups, they might be a hope for
diversity.
Absolutely, yes. I always take “contributor” to mean those who
contribute code, translations, documentation, etc, not just code.
This might have some difficult interplay with the concerns
people have brought up about broadening. Was the main concern
for infiltration? My initial intuition is that it would not be
a big factor, and that we would be vigilant and figure it out.
I fear “figuring it out” when necessary might be too late.
I would want members to be restricted to those who have a stake in
GNU, i.e. those who have been contributing to GNU (in whatever
capacity) for enough™ time. This closes the obvious loophole as
Ludo wrote earlier.
Maybe a board member could be immediately recalled if they do
not advocate for the social contract and the code of conduct.
I haven’t yet had the time to read the relevant governance drafts
you plucked from the mailing list archives, so perhaps my question
will become moot: I don’t see us needing a board yet. (If anyone
reads the archives in the future: this is my naivety on full
display.)
--
Ricardo