Last week Scott retained Ater Wynne (http://www.aterwynne.com/) in
Portland, OR to create the bylaws for OWF and do all of the filing for
the 501(c)3. They helped to create the Open Source Development Labs
and the OpenID Foundation, so certainly have a background in what
we're needing to do. We're starting to work off of the bylaws of the
Apache Software Foundation (http://apache.org/foundation/bylaws.html)
and making small changes such as to allow for fully electronic voting.
We're working working on getting the actual Foundation together as
fast as possible so that we can have a member elected board and start
moving away from just a few of us working on stuff like this. In the
interim, DeWitt Clinton and I will serve as the two board members just
to get the paperwork filed with the state of Oregon.
We've also been working on seeding the initial OWF membership with the
idea being to seed membership with people who have already
demonstrated commitment to the OWF's principles. Ben, DeWitt, Eran,
Scott, and I have been using the following criteria when looking for
the initial seed members:
Qualifiers (at least 2):
1. Helped build a successful open specification community.
2. Has been the primary author or editor of an open specification.
3. Has worked on developing IPR policies or foundation bylaws.
4. Has directly impacted the adoption of open specifications.
Future Commitments (willing to make at least 2):
1. Create and facilitate OWF bylaws.
2. Create and facilitate OWF IPR policies.
3. Act as active ambassador to other foundations and organizations.
4. Mentor a specification through OWF incubation.
From this set of criteria we've come up the the following list of seed
members (and yes, we realize they are all white males mainly from the
USA but haven't come up with a way to fix this yet):
- Alex Russell
- Ben Laurie
- Chris Messina
- David Recordon
- DeWitt Clinton
- Eran Hammer-Lahav
- Gabe Wachob
- John Panzer
- Scott Kveton
Please remember that it is *not* at all necessary to be a member to
participate. Editors and contributors will make up the majority of
people contributing to projects within OWF and at least initially the
majority might not be members. Following the ASF model, members will
be those who have made a clear, long-term commitment to the
Foundation. Of course, right now, we can't actually find such people,
but we have to bootstrap somehow, so the idea is that seed members are
the closest approximation we can get to that: i.e. those who have
worked on open specs and have tried to improve the IPR position (and
been frustrated by both the time taken and the end result). We don't
anticipate this being a really long list, but we'd like to see it grow
through active participation once we get under way, and during the
formation process.
So, who are we missing that meets the criteria to be a seed member? I
know there are a lot of people who care about what we're all trying to
do, though they must also be willing to really directly help make OWF
successful to meet the criteria to be a seed member.
Any other questions?
Thanks,
--David
May I just say that I feel that "fix this" is a poor choice of words?
Equal opportunity means if people of different ethnicities, genders,
backgrounds, nationalities, etc are *suited* for the position, that
you take them no easier or harder than anyone else. It *does not*
mean that if you find less qualified people of another group that you
should let them in anyway to "appear balanced".
I know that's probably not what you meant, but it may have been taken
that way from the wording (yes, I'm being pedantic).
--
Stephen Paul Weber, @singpolyma
Please see <http://singpolyma.net> for how I prefer to be contacted.
I hope that we will not compromise the policies in order to acommodate
existing projects. Obviously it would be nice if it turns out that
some of them could adopt our policies once we've finalised them,
though.
--David
It isn't so much that "white males" need to be "fixed" but that the
non-merit based aspects of the system that favor that demographic are
moved to favor all demographics more evenly.
</rant>
Chris
--
Chris Messina
Citizen-Participant &
Open Source Advocate-at-Large
factoryjoe.com # diso-project.org
citizenagency.com # vidoop.com
This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private
As a European who watches global open source trends, I strongly agree.
Having said that, I'm not sure I'd be eligible - can non-Americans
serve on a US non-profit board?
S.
If you know other people that meet the criteria, I'd love to hear
about them.
--David
On Aug 6, 2008, at 11:24 AM, Jonathan Vanasco <jona...@findmeon.com>
wrote:
I am English and I have been living and working for the past 9 years
in open source in Manaus in the Amazon .
There are a number of interesting things happening here regarding open
source, including the local Debian Users Group and ESLAM (Encontro
Software Livre in Amazonas). This attracted nearly 2000 people and we
even had 'Mad Dog' Hall and George Grieve from fsf Europe as
presenters.!
Things here are getting much more attention now from the outside world
(after Nokia set up their factory and Research Centre). Nokia were
working originally on the OPAM kernel but now do mainly Python stuff
for the N8xx range.
The problem was initially of course finding people with the necessary
skills here , by this I mean technical and language ones. Social
skills are of course *not* in short supply
The other thing that is not lacking here is education. Almost all
young people strive to educate themselves and this is the first thing
they think about after ensuring that they and their family have enough
food for the week. The problem is that the quality of education is
low...no books, no computers, generator power at night and so on. The
thing that strikes me is that even given these conditions the desire
is incredible. You can be pretty certain that a guy who brings his
whole family in a canoe along the river at night for a lesson will do
the best he can to learn and better his conditions.
IMO these are the people who will ultimately benefit from an open web
and I imagine that they are counting on you guys to do the best you
can for them, wherever you might happen to come from
Ian
Sure can. I served on the board of the ASF for years. Note, BTW, its a
list of seed members :-)
But, just like other forms of positive discrimination, the pool of
people who are suitable is self-determining - we can't co-opt
non-BayAreans unless they choose to participate.
>
> S.
>
>
> >
>
Why? All the work is to be done online.
[...]
> The IETF is an example of a broken process where all
> decisions are made online, BUT, much of the work is discussed and
> initiated offline in global events. All they have done is replaced a
> bay area centric community with a community of folks with enough time
> and money to travel a few times a year.
I can think of reasons why one might think the IETF process is broken,
but the fact that they have "offline" meetings does not strike me as one
of them.
I respectfully suggest that OWF should *plan* to have such meetings in
some manner (with IRC channels and live video streaming or other such
technologies perhaps involved), and I would note that OAuth has
certainly had "offline" meetings. Unsurprisingly, but disappointingly
(for some) they seem to have been exclusively on the West coast USA.
Although such meetings excluded me by a combination of date and
location, I still think they were a good idea.
AFAIK, ASF people also occasionally meet each other face to face (at the
very least at ApacheCon) and I suspect that's a useful thing to.
I would argue that occasional f2f meetings, both on specific OWF
projects, and for the OWF board are important. If you wish for (world-)
wide involvement, the location of such meetings should not always be on
the West coast of the USA. And to ensure that the latter occurs, you
actually might want to *actively* recruit some "seed member"
representation from places other than the West coast USA. Which is not
to say that they should otherwise be unqualified in the ways described
in David's initial email.
Regards,
- johnk
Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote: [...]The IETF is an example of a broken process where all decisions are made online, BUT, much of the work is discussed and initiated offline in global events. All they have done is replaced a bay area centric community with a community of folks with enough time and money to travel a few times a year.I can think of reasons why one might think the IETF process is broken, but the fact that they have "offline" meetings does not strike me as one of them.