On 20/06/2019 00:54, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
- The makeup and election / removal of the openSUSE Foundation board will remain the same as the current openSUSE board as documented in https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules
Maybe we ought to consider electing a chairman. For us to seek a greater degree of independence seems to clash with SUSE appointing a chairman.
This foundation proposal is not really about being more independent from SUSE, we will continue to be just as dependent on SUSE and in some ways we will be more dependent atleast initially, what this proposal allows though is openSUSE to partner with other organizations as well, currently the openSUSE project cannot receive donations or conference sponsorship etc without it going through SUSE, the main thing the foundation means is that openSUSE can start to do these things on our own. There are several offers from other parties and a bunch of conference sponsorship openSUSE has not been able to receive or take part in due to the lack of a legal entity. Our proposal is mostly initially aimed at fixing these issues. In the future if our relationship did happen to deteriorate with SUSE due to a change in ownership / management it is true that already having a foundation setup will make it much easier to become independent of SUSE but that's not our primary motivation or focus, but it is something we have considered in the design to make sure it would be possible. As for the chairman position the board feels that while SUSE is the primary sponsor and is managing / maintaining all of SUSE's infrastructure etc having the chairman position as someone who can work between openSUSE and the community / board is a very valuable role, in addition to the current things that SUSE provides it is likely a foundation would need 1 to 2 people to deal with the admin / paperwork of running the foundation, rather then the foundation employing these people directly it would be far easier if SUSE were to employ such people on behalf of the foundation as they already have HR / payroll people etc which is another reason why keeping a strong link between SUSE and the board makes sense. A interesting question however, is whether the chairperson should keep there veto on behalf of SUSE, if they didn't have that they would then just be the same as any other board member you could also change there name to "representative" or something and potentially remove there voting rights but atleast personally I am less in favor of those later things as hopefully SUSE would be appointing a chairperson who has a highly likely chance of being elected to the board by its members were they to run anyway. If the chairperson role was to go then you could potentially have no chairperson or the members could elect the board then the board could vote for who they'd like to be the chairperson out of the board members who have served for atleast a year, i'd prefer both of these approaches to trying to get the community to elect the chairperson. But regardless of the way we setup the board now a key thing is that the rules governing the way the board operates aren't set in stone and can be changed by 2/3rds of the members. So should we eventually end up at a point where SUSE is no longer the major sponsor of the foundation the members could decide to remove the position of chairperson. In summary there is a lot of things we could change in this area but the board feels that the current format is working really well and as such at this initial stage have decided to just propose keeping the status quo.
- The rules for membership of the openSUSE Foundation will remain the same as the rules for existing openSUSE members with the exception that members are required to be over 16 as per legal requirements. Existing openSUSE Members will be invited to become members of the new openSUSE Foundation
Hmm, normally a Foundation (Stiftung) does not have members, except the founders. An assocation (Verein) has members though.
This is true, however The Document Foundation (libre office) have paved the way here and have a Stiftung where the board is elected by members which means that it is possible. Cheers -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org