[Internals] Secretary Declarations of Conflicts of Interest

[Michael Cullum]

Hi all,

One of the primary reasons we decided on having three secretaries was to always ensure there was one secretary who could be impartial on a particular matter if the others were involved for whatever reason or biased in any way (Biases will always occur to some extent but we aim to mitigate that).

Amongst ourselves we communicate, discuss and agree on almost every action anyway but when it is a matter relevant to one of us, we casually mention our involvement on the mailing list, take a back seat in discussions and leave it to the other two to moderate discussions and handle votes. Every vote is handled by one individual secretary who is the person amongst ourselves we deem most appropriate taking into account availability and impartiality.

After some discussions at PHP South Coast this last weekend, it was pointed out we could be even more transparent about any conflicts of interest. The idea of this topic is we can post them all in one centralised transparent location explicitly. By explicitly declaring conflict of interests means we are inviting essentially extra scrutiny and making what is in effect a promise that we are taking a back seat on a particular matter which includes not moderating discussions on a particular topic or handling votes.

Should you ever see a secretary involve themselves, as a secretary (e.g. moderating a discussion or handling a vote), on a matter which you believe a conflict declared applies, or you believe a conflict has not been declared properly, please do reach out to us to discuss it (in...@php-fig.org goes to all three of us) and then the mailing list if you wish to escalate it; sometimes it might be a simple honest mistake.

Thanks,

The Secretaries

P.S. If you wish to discuss this, please create a separate topic as I'll lock this one so it will only be posted to be secretaries with conflicts of interest.

[Michael Cullum]

Three declarations from me:

* PSR-12: I was formerly Editor of this PSR before becoming Secretary and wrote the vast majority of the content of it. I am also to a lesser extent still involved in helping with it's authorship due to my previous role as Editor. In any discussions regarding PSR-12 content, progression or status I am speaking as myself as former Editor, and not Secretary and will not participate in any moderation/vote management due to my vested interest in it's success.

* FIG 3.0: I worked on drafting this with Larry and am open in my opinion on the new structure. Therefore in any discussions regarding it I am speaking as myself, not as a Secretary and will not participate in any moderation/vote management as I no longer hold impartiality on the topic.

* Secretary Role Bylaw: I worked on the initial bylaw defining the Secretary role so depending on the specific discussion (when concerning the role of secretaries) I may be either speaking as a Secretary commenting on how we function in the role, or as myself being the individual who wrote the bylaw. I will ensure I clarify in all instances as to what perspective I am speaking in this regard.

Many thanks,

Michael Cullum

[Samantha Quiñones]

With recent talk of conflicts of interest, it occurs to me that I never posted in this thread.

I have no direct project or PSR conflicts.

I am in a relationship with a voting member, Graham Daniels (PHP League). Because of this, I will continue to abstain from managing (administering or tallying) any votes that he sponsors on behalf of the League. I will continue to abstain from moderating any conflicts in which Graham is a party. I will continue to abstain from decisions regarding the clarification or interpretation of bylaws that is asked for by Graham or that, in the opinion of the membership or other secretaries, would unduly impact the League. As far as I understand, the League has an internal process for deciding how to vote on matters. I am neither privy to nor interested in that process.

Thanks,
Samantha

[Michael Cullum]

Hi all,

It was pointed out to me that when I initially created this, I had only posted conflicts related to ongoing FIG projects. The reason for this topic was after I had a discussion with a friend about conflicts in general; I then suggested to Joe and Samantha that we create this topic to announce our conflicts regarding FIG projects to all voting members (to whom we serve), as opposed to just informing each other (we were generally all aware of each other's actions and conflicts as we communicate between each other a lot) and they were both happy with this. Recent discussions have highlighted that other connections (personal and project related) should be posted.

I am also a team member at phpBB (Something I am hardly discreet about on the FIG Mailing List, feel free to do a search for 'Michael Cullum phpBB', I used to sometimes post from mic...@phpbb.com, I said it in my secretary nomination topic and reference it occasionally), however I am not on our core development team, and whilst I am a manager (we have a variety of managers who are equal and on project-wide, finance etc. issues we hold votes) each manager has final control over their area. Marc (the phpBB representative) is the Lead Developer (Manager for Development essentially) and therefore holds the final ultimate authority over anything related to core development and things such as the FIG. Whilst I am an active voice in our own core development (primarily in initiatives to modernise the core such as introduction of Symfony/Composer and 'doing things the right way'), I do not act a development team member and therefore have no vote or say in any FIG vote by the project. FIG votes are exercised simply by Marc (or the lead developer of the time, previously Nils) and Marc alone, we don't have any internal feedback process that I could respond to. As it has been highlighted that personal relationships could be a problem, I am of course good friends with Marc (I also said this on the mailing list when he became a representative), but I am also friends with a number of other representatives to equal extents.

Many thanks,

Michael C