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

Hello Gianluca,

Le Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:05:50 +0200,
"Gianluca Turconi" <ml@letturefantastiche.com> a écrit :

> 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.

So, if I understand you well, you do indeed raise a good question, but
one which, to me, adds more gray zones. Let me rephrase how I
understand your position: you are afraid that we're mixing the
membership of the Foundation and the membership of the community, and
that by mixing the two we would be putting the foundation itself (the
legal object, the kernel as you called it) in jeopardy . Basically,
every contributor could come around and harm the foundation. (Did I get
this right?)

If that's what you implied, I... sort of don't agree with you but at
the same time see wisdom in your objection. We would need protect
certain parts of the foundation from direct, daily interference.
However, where I don't agree with you is that we should, provided a
majority of contributors do agree, be in charge of our own destiny. 

This being said, I believe it's necessary to focus on the question of
the membership, and separate it from the question of the foundation
structure and its governance. Obviously, these questions are all
related, but if we handle more specific ones, we'll be able to generate
some valuable input I think.

Best,

-- 
Charles-H. Schulz
Membre du Comité exécutif
The Document Foundation.

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