Re: [tdf-discuss] [SC] How to define "Membership" within TDF?

In data 19 ottobre 2010 alle ore 14:34:33, Charles-H. Schulz
<charles.schulz@documentfoundation.org> ha scritto:

> I can understand why you want to make that distinction. My own
> interpretation, aside the fact that we stated at the beginning what we
> hear by "member", is that how we define the membership applies to
> anyone, but it is based on its role and contribution. An individual
> should be able to contribute and be recognized as a member. As such, no
> corporation, who might also be a member, shall be recognized as having
> a higher footing; contributions are what matters only. Perhaps I did
> misunderstand you there, but there is of course another kind of
> community, which is often referred as "an user community".

Yes, it's likely you misunderstood me. :)

I didn't mean the "user community", but the dev community itself.

However, I think there's another important misunderstanding about what
*you* (Charles and Andre and maybe others) think a Foundation is and what
*I* think it is.

According to me, a Foundation is a central, independent legal entity that
takes decisions about a productivity suite called LibreOffice (BTW, who
owns the trademark?): how to protect its code base (without copyright
assignment), how to further develop it, how to improve the open source
ecosystem around its development.

That kind of things cannot be done without a formal and well defined
membership application.

Contribution cannot be enough for a member's application acceptance,
because in my conception of Foundation, there are actual principles that
are not limited to "contribution".

And they cannot be tested in the books ("I swear to respect the
Foundation's Charter") but they must be clear in the facts ("I'm a well
respected member of the community and I've always acted in good faith in
the past").

I mean: this time, after what happened with Sun/Oracle, we need to cancel
any "gray zone" and keep in mind that ***Free Software*** comes first.

A larger members' base is useless for a Foundation if those "gray zones"
are kept.
--
Gianluca Turconi

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