[OpenStack Foundation] is 'strategic' the right name? (was Re: Foundation Structure: An Alternative)

Alan Clark aclark at suse.com
Tue Mar 13 21:44:14 UTC 2012



>>> On 3/13/2012 at 02:51 PM, "Alan Clark" <aclark at suse.com> wrote: 

> 
>>>> On 3/13/2012 at 04:37 AM, Dave Neary <dave at neary-consulting.com> wrote: 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On 03/09/2012 11:45 PM, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2012-03-09 at 16:27 -0600, Mark Collier wrote:
>>>> Associate Member category, [...]
>>>> Strategic Member [...]
>>>
>>> I wonder if calling 'Strategic' members that basically only have more
>>> money but the same responsibilities and rights of other members is
>>> really the best thing to do. It made sense when we had only two kinds
>>> (corporate and individuals) and corporate members where called to put
>>> money down to create the foundation. That was a strategic role.
>> 
>> I agree with you Stefano. I suggested moving away from "strategic 
>> members" as a name previously, because it includes an implicit value 
>> judgement - "OpenStack is important to these people (and, by 
>> implication, not so much to others)" - I don't know whether there is a 
>> specific reason for sticking with that label rather than something like 
>> gold/platinum member, which other organisations use.
>> 
>> 
>> Incidentally, I still think that starting from the question "what will 
>> the foundation do, and how much will that cost?" is useful, and will 
>> help resolve some of the questions around the composition of the board.
>> 
>> My suggestion is to start by drawing up a charter of the foundation 
>> describing its scope, and a job description/budget for an executive 
>> director. In my opinion, it doesn't make sense to say "The foundation 
>> will have 6 full time resources, working on X, Y and Z" before you have 
>> an executive director in place - that person would then, ideally, put 
>> together a budget proposal and recs for hires of the people they would 
>> need to accomplish the foundation's mission - and such a proposal would 
>> need approval by the board.
>> 
>> As one example: the OuterCurve Foundation has 2 full time employees (an 
>> executive director and a technical director) and outsources all of their 
>> administrative, legal, financial and marketing services. They're 
>> basically spending the equivalent of one full-time person for 4 
>> different functions. When they have a longer-term need, and the budget 
>> to pay for it, they will hire people in at that point.
>> 
>> 
>> On the board size issue, I'll once again point people to the Linux 
>> Foundation's solution to the problem: a number of seats per membership 
>> level, including some seats named from the TAB and elected by individual 
>> members. This gives individual members some (representative) oversight 
>> into the financial running of the foundation, and importantly, a voice 
>> at the table for strategic decisions which could affect the Linux 
>> developer community, but honestly, the running of the Linux Foundation 
>> affects very little the running of the kernel project (except when they 
>> decide to hire kernel hackers as "fellows").
> 
> I agree with the Point that Dave is making here, but do want to clarify a 
> bit and draw out an additional point.  One of the LF Board seats is for a 
> representative of the TAB.  That representative is elected by a vote amongst 
> all invitees of the Linux Kernel Summit, many of which are not necessarily 
> individual members of the Linux Foundation.  The TAB representative on the LF 
> board is a vital member of the board as that person represents the key 
> contributors to the Linux Kernel; which provides ties directly back to the 
> mission of the LF.  Having such a representative on the board has proven 
> extremely valuable over the years to provide direct insight into the needs of 
> the community, rich communication channels, the ability to build a high 
> degree of trust between the open source community and the LF, the ability to 
> react quickly to community needs. 
> 
> As discussion continues for the makeup of the OpenStack board, I would 
> suggest that a similar inclusion is warranted. I'm not as sure where that 
> representative should come from, perhaps the Technical Council, but I do 
> believe that such a representative is needed.
> 

On today's call, Jonathan clarified for me that all contributors will be part of the individual members class. The individual member class has seats on the board, so my point is covered!

> regards,
> AlanClark
> 
>> 
>> I do understand what Joshua is saying - it would not be good to have Big 
>> Players who get to railroad all the strategic decisions of the 
>> foundation and potentially (a) take the foundation in a direction which 
>> is not what the technical contributors want, essentially making it 
>> irrelevant, or (b) having excessive influence on the direction of the 
>> member projects with potentially damaging results. What I suggested was 
>> a model based on 3 thirds: the Big Guys pay money and get a guaranteed 
>> board seat, the next level down pay less money and run elections for a 
>> third of the board seats, and individual members (by whatever criteria 
>> is judged appropriate) elect another third of the board. That seems to 
>> address most of the concerns.
>> 
>> In terms of the level playing field, I'd suggest that the board 
>> shouldn't be on the field in the first place. But I know that a number 
>> of people think that's idealistic of me :)
>> 
>> 
>> One thing I would like to say is that having in-person meetings to 
>> resolve debates like this is a Very Bad Idea. That is one way that the 
>> organisation end up leaning towards the big members who can send someone 
>> to such meetings at short notice or a small constituency of people who 
>> live in the same geographic area. It might take longer and be more 
>> painful, but I'd urge you to keep the debate online - and even to avoid 
>> real-time debate where possible.
>> 
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Dave.
> 
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