[steering-discuss] Updated draft of the Community Bylaws

Last call: are we good on this?

best
Charles.

Hello Charles, Florian, et al,

The document reads like a final statement of intentions for me.

Florian's earlier points regarding not excluding all TDF employees from
the board made good sense, particularly given the size of the foundation
currently,and a board consisting of 9 members, fewer board members (half
that) and I might disagree.

The one month governor in the solemn address clause I think was a good
addition. Opening us up to unwarranted agitation in the community was my
biggest concern in raising the point regarding a call for early
elections and this is a good way to mitigate that risk.

As for the later points on future full autonomy vs control by a small
group of corps. I think in the end there is no way to codify that risk
away, it just comes down to the people here. I would suggest that if the
board members act as stewards versus owners of the roles they take on
for the community, then the community and therefor the foundation should
flourish, independently. Given what I know of, who I know here, my
belief is that there is a good chance of just that happening.

IMO the likelihood of our staying independent, is much more dependent,
on the next phase of the Foundation's history. Constructing by
convention and act, rather then text, the 'nitty gritty' details of how,
as teams we will work together.

Guess that's a long winded +1 on the current draft as final.
(typos not withstanding :slight_smile:

Drew Jensen

Hello Drew,

Well spoken. And with that, I declare the Community Bylaws adopted
(provided nobody from the SC punches me in the face right away)...

Huzzah!
Charles.

Hi Charles, :slight_smile:

Hello Drew,

Well spoken. And with that, I declare the Community Bylaws adopted
(provided nobody from the SC punches me in the face right away)...

Huzzah!
Charles.

Does this mean I can now call you Monsieur Le President?

Great news that we now have the bylaws (or bye-laws!)

David Nelson

Thanks to everyone for their work!

Florian Effenberger 05 dicembre 2010 20.55:

+1. Can you prepare some text?

Yes, I will do it today or tomorrow. In any case, we must wait at least a couple of days before we can distribute another announcement.

Hi David,

@mmeeks: Michael, what exactly do you mean by this phrase:

"Members agree to work and contribute to an egalitarian community,
where roles are not titles and do not grant any special privileges."

Does that mean that there will be no team leads? If so, how will one
be able to have sufficient authority to organize and direct work? :wink:
I think I don't understand... Could you explain, maybe, please?

  Well - this is my view :slight_smile: it is perhaps not a sensible view, I'm open
to persuasion, and luckily I don't make these decisions the SC / board
does / will, but here is my advice:

  In my view, authority is conferred by two ways: hard work, and
relationship. Those who do the hard work, and build the product, teams
and relationships, will naturally lead those teams. Hopefully they do
this not alone, but with others too.

  AFAICS - giving an artificial "job title" to someone does not always
help them build an effective team that works well with others; and
indeed, it can hinder work or create conflict.

  Worse - while we would hope that a job title would reflect a reality:
that of someone (or the people) doing the most work in a given community
- the OO.o experience has shown us that -sometimes- these titles are
handed out like candy to random individuals, who then cease to do useful
work, or practically disappear :slight_smile: It seems to me that detecting these
cases, and arbitrating / transfering / handing out official titles is
some political nightmare that cannot be easily imposed from outside the
sub-community, and can go badly wrong inside it.

  That is contrasted to a fairly natural shift in control as new people
arrive to do more work, and others start to do less: this is the reality
of Free Software projects, managing a continuous flux of change and
turnover of people.

  Of course, if the Board wants to create this sort of arbitration and
selection problem, I defer to their wisdom; but I'm personally against
it. Clearly there are some formal roles it is hard to live without:
board member, spokesperson etc. Others IMHO do not need to be clear cut,
and are best left fluid.

  Does that make (some) sense ? :slight_smile:

  HTH,

    Michael.

Hi Charles,

Last call: are we good on this?

  Sigh; I only just got to reading the final draft, busy day yesterday.
Overall it seems to be excellent, I have a few un-addressed concerns:

  Members are expected to refrain from any kind of expression of
  racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political
  intolerance.

  This sounds like a vow of chastity :slight_smile: It appears to apply to the whole
of life, and not just to engagement with TDF etc. As such is is somewhat
offensive, and in itself an oxymoron: "I can't tolerate your
intolerance" ;-). Many communities have people with strong, colorful and
opposing views expressed in strong terms. This to me is a sign of health
and diversity - instead of some bland pea-soup of non-expression :slight_smile:

  I'd like to excise that; though clearly we need some minimal good
behaviour policy I don't believe it belongs here. I rather prefer
relying on the much more helpful text in the "Revocation of membership"
section, that talks about ad-hominem, attacks, abuse, insulting, etc. -
sounds like a much more sensible line that is supportable :slight_smile:

  Every membership applicant must have been active for at least
  three (3) months, and should make a moral commitment to at least
  six (6) months activity (not counting the first three (3) months
  of fulfillment of qualification).

  Again - this moral commitment to future work is a problem for people
that take their commitments seriously. I can't commit to work on
LibreOffice for six months: anything could happen - I might be
incapacitated, die suddenly, loose my mind (arguably this has already
happened) :slight_smile: IMHO the "future commitment" is sufficiently built on an
(already over-long) three month history with the project - I would like
to see that removed.

  Continuity of membership section.

  This is much improved, I like the renewal process, makes a lot of
sense.

  Anyhow - otherwise, I am completely behind this, it seems rather
polished now, and the checks and balances seem more than adequate.

  With the removal of one paragraph, and the end of that 'moral
commitment' sentence I'm 100% behind this.

  Thanks !

    Michael.

To expand on this; is it -really- our intention to deny membership to
people who have contributed a huge amount to LibreOffice already, and
are entirely new ? - having started work on LibreOffice only when it was
announced ?

  There is a lot to dislike in this:

  "Every membership applicant must have been active for at least
   three (3) months, and should make a moral commitment to at
   least six (6) months activity (not counting the first three (3)
   months of fulfillment of qualification)."

  Can we not simply defer to the "significant contribution" piece ?
ultimately, if someone has made a really significant contribution in the
last week, I'm well up for them not being excluded from membership; and
I think we cover that in the criteria for membership elsewhere: good
reputation, and doing non-trivial work.

  Or do we plan some special one-off thing for entirely new contributors
since we created LibreOffice ?

  Thanks,

    Michael.

Hi Michael, :slight_smile:

Well - this is my view :slight_smile: it is perhaps not a sensible view, I'm open
to persuasion, and luckily I don't make these decisions the SC / board
does / will, but here is my advice:

In my view, authority is conferred by two ways: hard work, and
relationship. Those who do the hard work, and build the product, teams
and relationships, will naturally lead those teams. Hopefully they do
this not alone, but with others too.

AFAICS - giving an artificial "job title" to someone does not always
help them build an effective team that works well with others; and
indeed, it can hinder work or create conflict.

Worse - while we would hope that a job title would reflect a reality:
that of someone (or the people) doing the most work in a given community
- the OO.o experience has shown us that -sometimes- these titles are
handed out like candy to random individuals, who then cease to do useful
work, or practically disappear :slight_smile: It seems to me that detecting these
cases, and arbitrating / transfering / handing out official titles is
some political nightmare that cannot be easily imposed from outside the
sub-community, and can go badly wrong inside it.

That is contrasted to a fairly natural shift in control as new people
arrive to do more work, and others start to do less: this is the reality
of Free Software projects, managing a continuous flux of change and
turnover of people.

Of course, if the Board wants to create this sort of arbitration and
selection problem, I defer to their wisdom; but I'm personally against
it. Clearly there are some formal roles it is hard to live without:
board member, spokesperson etc. Others IMHO do not need to be clear cut,
and are best left fluid.

Does that make (some) sense ? :slight_smile:

I must admit that I don't really agree with you, Michael. There is
always need for organization and coordination in any human enterprise.
Personally, I can't think of any viable, successful endeavour
involving organized action that would work without them. Open Source
has demonstrated that in the past - with positive examples and
negative examples. But, IMHO, that principle is practically
ubiquitous.

Members are expected to refrain from any kind of expression of
       racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political
       intolerance.

This sounds like a vow of chastity :slight_smile: It appears to apply to the whole
of life, and not just to engagement with TDF etc. As such is is somewhat
offensive, and in itself an oxymoron: "I can't tolerate your
intolerance" ;-). Many communities have people with strong, colorful and
opposing views expressed in strong terms. This to me is a sign of health
and diversity - instead of some bland pea-soup of non-expression :slight_smile:

Again, I'm afraid don't agree with you. One of the negative things
about many FOSS projects is the kind of negative behavior, attitudes
and treatment that people sometimes have to put up with - there have
been several threads in the TDF lists where it has occurred. I suspect
that there would be plenty of people who would support what I've
written.

In any case, you've had lots of time to read and comment. :wink: Me, I
was extremely concerned from day #1 of the launch that TDF had not
prepared things properly, and that it did not have a "draft
constitution" to put before people right at the outset. But instead of
just standing back and criticizing from a distance, I wanted to get
involved in remedying the problem.

Anyway, as we all well know, for every guy that says "Turn left!"
there will be another that says "Turn right!" :smiley:

In any case, I've done my best to be of practical help, and you guys
are free to do what you will. :wink:

David Nelson

Hello Michael,

Hi Charles,

> Last call: are we good on this?

  Sigh; I only just got to reading the final draft, busy day
yesterday. Overall it seems to be excellent, I have a few
un-addressed concerns:

  Members are expected to refrain from any kind of expression of
  racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political
  intolerance.

  This sounds like a vow of chastity :slight_smile: It appears to apply to
the whole of life, and not just to engagement with TDF etc. As such
is is somewhat offensive, and in itself an oxymoron: "I can't
tolerate your intolerance" ;-). Many communities have people with
strong, colorful and opposing views expressed in strong terms. This
to me is a sign of health and diversity - instead of some bland
pea-soup of non-expression :slight_smile:

  I'd like to excise that; though clearly we need some minimal
good behaviour policy I don't believe it belongs here. I rather prefer
relying on the much more helpful text in the "Revocation of
membership" section, that talks about ad-hominem, attacks, abuse,
insulting, etc. - sounds like a much more sensible line that is
supportable :slight_smile:

  Every membership applicant must have been active for at least
  three (3) months, and should make a moral commitment to at
least six (6) months activity (not counting the first three (3) months
  of fulfillment of qualification).

  Again - this moral commitment to future work is a problem for
people that take their commitments seriously. I can't commit to work
on LibreOffice for six months: anything could happen - I might be
incapacitated, die suddenly, loose my mind (arguably this has already
happened) :slight_smile: IMHO the "future commitment" is sufficiently built on an
(already over-long) three month history with the project - I would
like to see that removed.

  Continuity of membership section.

  This is much improved, I like the renewal process, makes a
lot of sense.

  Anyhow - otherwise, I am completely behind this, it seems
rather polished now, and the checks and balances seem more than
adequate.

  With the removal of one paragraph, and the end of that 'moral
commitment' sentence I'm 100% behind this.

So I didn't write the first paragraph, and I believe it is of no
consequence at all; as for the moral commitment I'm the one who added
the term "moral". It might have been me using a french expression more
than anything. By adding "moral" I was emphasizing that it wasn't
"legal", meaning: you can commit "in spirit", but it's not a
fundamental problem affecting your membership if you don't. Remember
that non-members can contribute patches, submit bug reports, etc. If
you want to become a member it's gotta be for a reason :slight_smile:

Is this something that clarifies the sentence ?

best,
Charles.

Hello again,

> IMHO the "future commitment" is sufficiently built on an
> (already over-long) three month history with the project - I would
> like to see that removed.

  To expand on this; is it -really- our intention to deny
membership to people who have contributed a huge amount to
LibreOffice already, and are entirely new ? - having started work on
LibreOffice only when it was announced ?

We needed to put a date, but reading that sentence I'm sure that
there's enough flexibility to it to accommodate most of the tangential
cases... (Eventually the Membership Committee is going to come up with
all sorts of micro-rules and assessment that will give many of us a
complete headache)...

Best,
Charles.

Just on the member application process. Why not just leave it as

"
An applicant preferably should be nominated by an existing Member.

The applicant should have earned a good reputation among the existing
Community of Members, i.e, by engaging in specific, tangible activities.
"

Sound good to me, while...

"Every membership applicant must have been active for at least three (3)
months, and should make a moral commitment to at least six (6) months
activity (not counting the first three (3) months of fulfillment of
qualification)."

Adding in these specific lengths of time would exclude the possibility
of fast-tracking someone exceptional to become a member in order to lock
them into the organization fast, leaving it as "should have earned a
good reputation" grants enough flexibility to handle the case while
retaining the ability to hold back membership from someone as yet
unproven. No ?

I share Michaels concern about the "moral commitment" for another 6
months work. I intend to continue contributing, but can I guarantee out
for 6 months that I will be ? And I wouldn't like to stake my honour on
it. Why not make it less ethically judgemental and just shift that out
into the Continuity of Membership and leave a lack of activity for 6
months or so as the timeout after which membership lapses ?

C.

Hi David,

I must admit that I don't really agree with you, Michael. There is
always need for organization and coordination in any human enterprise.

  Sure - we are all agreed on this :slight_smile: the question is whether that
requires formal job titles, or whether it scales and adapts better with
informal relationships backed up by transparency.

> Members are expected to refrain from any kind of expression of
> racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political
> intolerance.

..

Again, I'm afraid don't agree with you. One of the negative things
about many FOSS projects is the kind of negative behavior, attitudes
and treatment that people sometimes have to put up with - there have
been several threads in the TDF lists where it has occurred. I suspect
that there would be plenty of people who would support what I've
written.

  So - if you have cases where you would want to exclude people from
membership for these reasons, or to censor them - please do post links;
if people are not prepared to point the finger, then there is little
purpose served by the rule surely ? :slight_smile:

  Furthermore, I have a vast political intolerance for parties that lobby
for software patents (indeed I've lobbied against them), I have a
near-null tolerance for some religions that involve human sacrifice
[ there are some still extant ] and/or the consumption of endangered
species, and I have a similar acute distaste for terrorism, and Israeli
oppression.

   Bingo - I just broke most of the rules. The current paragraph with its
incredibly broad scope forbids me to express any of these things in any
context - as such is over-broad as well as un-necessary :slight_smile:

  The excellent text forbidding ad-hominem attacks, abuse etc. seems to
cover all the interesting situations of inter-personal conflict that we
want to proscribe.

In any case, you've had lots of time to read and comment. :wink: Me, I
was extremely concerned from day #1 of the launch that TDF had not
prepared things properly, and that it did not have a "draft
constitution" to put before people right at the outset. But instead of
just standing back and criticizing from a distance, I wanted to get
involved in remedying the problem.

  And you did a great job :slight_smile: as I say - don't get the impression that I
don't like the overall result; it is IMHO nearly perfect.

In any case, I've done my best to be of practical help, and you guys
are free to do what you will. :wink:

  So - again, thank you ! it was wonderful to have you engaged. That we
disagree on some details doesn't nullify the great work you put in here,
the useful checks & balances, critical thinking, textual review etc. was
much appreciated by me at least.

  Thanks,

    Michael.

David Nelson wrote:

Michael wrote:
>        Members are expected to refrain from any kind of expression of
>        racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political
>        intolerance.
>
>        This sounds like a vow of chastity :slight_smile: It appears to apply to the whole
> of life, and not just to engagement with TDF etc. As such is is somewhat
> offensive, and in itself an oxymoron: "I can't tolerate your
> intolerance" ;-). Many communities have people with strong, colorful and
> opposing views expressed in strong terms. This to me is a sign of health
> and diversity - instead of some bland pea-soup of non-expression :slight_smile:

Again, I'm afraid don't agree with you. One of the negative things
about many FOSS projects is the kind of negative behavior, attitudes
and treatment that people sometimes have to put up with - there have
been several threads in the TDF lists where it has occurred. I suspect
that there would be plenty of people who would support what I've
written.

Hi David, all,

there's a fine line here, and somewhat of a difference e.g. between
US- and european countries, when it comes to the aforementioned
points. We've made it a rule in TDF, to not prematurely
over-regulate - so I'd generally be in favour of using common sense,
instead of blacklisting topics (which is not gonna cover all future
cases anyway). On that grounds, what about staying with the sentence
before (which is a whitelist, and thus inherently much more positive
in tone):

"Every Member is expected to deal with other Community Members and
with our end users with courtesy, forbearance, objectivity,
open-mindedness, friendliness, understanding, patience and
goodwill."

and striking the contentious sentence for the while? Do you see any
of the blacklisted topics not covered by the positive statement?

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

Hi Thorsten, :slight_smile:

Hi David, all,

there's a fine line here, and somewhat of a difference e.g. between
US- and european countries, when it comes to the aforementioned
points.  We've made it a rule in TDF, to not prematurely
over-regulate - so I'd generally be in favour of using common sense,
instead of blacklisting topics (which is not gonna cover all future
cases anyway). On that grounds, what about staying with the sentence
before (which is a whitelist, and thus inherently much more positive
in tone):

"Every Member is expected to deal with other Community Members and
 with our end users with courtesy, forbearance, objectivity,
 open-mindedness, friendliness, understanding, patience and
 goodwill."

and striking the contentious sentence for the while? Do you see any
of the blacklisted topics not covered by the positive statement?

Cheers,

Charles has stated that the community bylaws are to be considered to
be in force now, and that any further changes must be made by the
BoD... I no longer have a green light to edit them... Sorry about
this...

David Nelson

A few comments about the last comments:

1st: Yes, the negatives (racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political intolerance) are covered by the positives, if we were driven by common sense, but unfortunately this is not always the case, and I feel that we should maintain the sentence about the negatives. It makes me feel more comfortable.

2nd: Membership application: I think that we should leave the sentence about the 3 and 6 months, although we all know that being volunteers we cannot make any "total" commitment to the project. We all know that we can die sometimes (and being the oldest member, I'm closer that any one else), but I don't think that we should consider this when we commit. Also, I think that we need the rule of 3/6 months to avoid conflicts on "normal" cases, being ready to break the rule when someone makes a very significant contribution (which might happen, I think, in development, as I've never seen anyone making such a contribution in marketing as we need time to show that we have ideas and competence).

3rd: Project leads: of course, reputation is not a title attribution, but we should thin about some governance and organization, because this is going to be the only way to grow the project and make it successful. I have been in the IT industry for 30 years, and before 1981 I was a manager in different organizations. Good management makes a difference, and good management is extremely difficult to find (people @ Novell has a huge experience of lame management, and Sun was a benchmark for lame management). Good managers have a personal reputation and are natural leaders, and I think that we should aim to have them in place.

A few comments about the last comments:

1st: Yes, the negatives (racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political intolerance) are covered by the positives, if we were driven by common sense, but unfortunately this is not always the case, and I feel that we should maintain the sentence about the negatives. It makes me feel more comfortable.

2nd: Membership application: I think that we should leave the sentence about the 3 and 6 months, although we all know that being volunteers we cannot make any "total" commitment to the project. We all know that we can die sometimes (and being the oldest member, I'm closer that any one else), but I don't think that we should consider this when we commit. Also, I think that we need the rule of 3/6 months to avoid conflicts on "normal" cases, being ready to break the rule when someone makes a very significant contribution (which might happen, I think, in development, as I've never seen anyone making such a contribution in marketing as we need time to show that we have ideas and competence).

3rd: Project leads: of course, reputation is not a title attribution, but we should thin about some governance and organization, because this is going to be the only way to grow the project and make it successful. I have been in the IT industry for 30 years, and before 1981 I was a manager in different organizations. Good management makes a difference, and good management is extremely difficult to find (people @ Novell has a huge experience of lame management, and Sun was a benchmark for lame management). Good managers have a personal reputation and are natural leaders, and I think that we should aim to have them in place.

-- Italo Vignoli
italo.vignoli@gmail.com
Mobile +39.348.5653829
VoIP: +39.02.320621813
Skype: italovignoli

A few comments about the last comments:

1st: Yes, the negatives (racism, xenophobia, sexism and religious or political intolerance) are covered by the positives, if we were driven by common sense, but unfortunately this is not always the case, and I feel that we should maintain the sentence about the negatives. It makes me feel more comfortable.

2nd: Membership application: I think that we should leave the sentence about the 3 and 6 months, although we all know that being volunteers we cannot make any "total" commitment to the project. We all know that we can die sometimes (and being the oldest member, I'm closer that any one else), but I don't think that we should consider this when we commit. Also, I think that we need the rule of 3/6 months to avoid conflicts on "normal" cases, being ready to break the rule when someone makes a very significant contribution (which might happen, I think, in development, as I've never seen anyone making such a contribution in marketing as we need time to show that we have ideas and competence).

3rd: Project leads: of course, reputation is not a title attribution, but we should thin about some governance and organization, because this is going to be the only way to grow the project and make it successful. I have been in the IT industry for 30 years, and before 1981 I was a manager in different organizations. Good management makes a difference, and good management is extremely difficult to find (people @ Novell has a huge experience of lame management, and Sun was a benchmark for lame management). Good managers have a personal reputation and are natural leaders, and I think that we should aim to have them in place.

Hello everyone,

Following our confcall of Saturday, I would first like to express my
apologies for my message on the status of our community bylaws.

At the moment our community bylaws are *almost* good. Some people here
and elsewhere have expressed a strong opinion on the clause on racism
and xenophobia; it will be replaced according to the discussion that
have taken place here.

Much in the same sense, the community bylaws are expected to be amended
in the following months in a minimal way -and mostly for formal
grounds- because of the legal and formal requirements induced by the
incorporation of our foundation. I cannot at this stage point to
anything specific, but there might be a change in names, for instance,
"Board of Directors" might be renamed "Board of Trustees" because
that's how the local law would want it, etc.

This does leave us with the following status:
- Community Bylaws can be, after modification of the racism clause, be
  considered as the "Final Draft", a sort of Release Candidate; it's
  almost final, but not quite.
- We will enable these bylaws just after we've properly incorporated
  and made any relevant formal change to them. Until then, we continue
  as we have done before, but obviously, what we already wrote can be
  progressively implemented, and taken inspiration from; we will see
  more and more teams being formed, etc.
- It is not -unless it's absolutely necessary (note the "absolutely" in
  my sentence) desired to have people coming up with more and more
  modifications or points. Our bylaws are very much stable at the
  moment and we won't rewrite them with some new ideas.

Please accept my apologies for the confusion on this topic, and please
bear with us for some more time until we have completed the legal stage
of the community development.

Thank you,