Re: Proposed revisions of Article 3: Membership

I have had several discussions with Ian, Joey, and Dale about this, and
this will be the first time those thoughts are really put down in writing.
Eventually it would be nice to have a document that contains all of the
rationales behind the articles- that way people can see the 'spirit of the
law' as well as the letter.

Actually, before the real 'writing' I'd like to outline a few possible
scenarios. I'm not sure which one makes most sense... all have their
advantages and drawbacks. I'm somewhat torn between scenarios 1&2- I'm
not sure which is better suited to SPIs goals.

I'd like to figure out which scenario makes the most sense (and why!!) and
then figure out the details, and then actually write the bylaws article.
When commenting on this, please don't just ask questions- also try to
propose solutions at the same time.

Discussion season is open.

Nils.

Scenario 1:
-----------
'flat' membership. In this case everyone who agrees with the principles
and goals of SPI can become a member. Voting can be either limited to
voting for board embers, or voting on resolutions etc. as well (with
quorums established etc.).

ADVANTAGES:
- No membership levels (i.e. flat membership)
- very little administrative work
- greater membership carries more political weight
- advantages if members only vote for the board members is that SPI can
be very reactive (in terms of speed). If you think about it, you're
electing the people that listen to the discussions, and then make the
decisions (i.e. vote on the resolutions that have been developed).

DISADVANTAGES
- if members vote on resolutions etc. then the voting process will take
a lot longer. Thus SPI will be less reactive. Perhaps the board can be
permitted to approve a resolution with a super majority (2/3 + 1 or
something similar)
- more/less informed members (some will be more/less active) mean
discussions will likely last longer

Scenario 2:
-----------
tiered membership. Have 'contributing members' and 'supporting members'
where the contributing members have to be active in the free software
world in some way.
contributing members can vote on board members and resolutions
supporting members can not vote, but can propose resolutions

ADVANTAGES:
- voting is easier since there will be less people who have to vote
- voters will be more informed since they're more active
- SPI still gets the large membership base

DISADVANTAGES
- you need to define contributing (that's not hard) and somehow verify
that the member is contributing. A neat idea would be two year
memberships and at the end of the two years you have to send a mail
stating what you've done in the last two years for the community.
- more administrative work- the membership committee has to worry about
all this
- do we _want_ to create a difference between members? i.e. the
discussion is going and someone says 'but I'm a contributing member and
you're not!' Yuck. Ugly.

Scenario 3:
-----------
only contributing members are allowed. (I personally don't like this
option at all.)

ADVANTAGES
- informed members
- simpler (shorter) voting periods

DISADVANTAGES
- much much smaller membership -> less political weight. If we're
trying to represent and stand for the community, we should allow anyone in.
- less of a range of opinions in the discussions and less interest in
the discussions. why should non members join in?

--
Nils Lohner Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
E-Mail: lohner(at)spi-inc(dot)org PO Box 1326
Board Of Directors <board(at)spi-inc(dot)org> Boston, Ma. 02117 USA

For those of you reading this, I've not written this linearly. For
example, I started with a comment to Scenario 3.

On Thu, Mar 18, 1999 at 05:38:29PM -0500, Nils Lohner wrote:
> Scenario 1:
> -----------
> 'flat' membership. In this case everyone who agrees with the principles
> and goals of SPI can become a member. Voting can be either limited to
> voting for board embers, or voting on resolutions etc. as well (with
> quorums established etc.).
>
> ADVANTAGES:
> - No membership levels (i.e. flat membership)
> - very little administrative work
> - greater membership carries more political weight
> - advantages if members only vote for the board members is that SPI can
> be very reactive (in terms of speed). If you think about it, you're
> electing the people that listen to the discussions, and then make the
> decisions (i.e. vote on the resolutions that have been developed).
>
> DISADVANTAGES
> - if members vote on resolutions etc. then the voting process will take
> a lot longer. Thus SPI will be less reactive. Perhaps the board can be
> permitted to approve a resolution with a super majority (2/3 + 1 or
> something similar)
> - more/less informed members (some will be more/less active) mean
> discussions will likely last longer
With the three given scenarios, I'd choose this one. The whole membership
should be given rights to vote on the board *AND* resolutions. The Board
should appoint any and all committees to a tenure that ends at the board's
next election and the Board/Committee should be given a respectable amount
of freedom to act. There is no reason we need a resolution to decide that
Apple's or IBM's licenses are not Open Source as claimed and to act.

Resolutions should be left for guiding the board... but the board and
committee's should have the latitude to "react".

> Scenario 2:
> -----------
> tiered membership. Have 'contributing members' and 'supporting members'
> where the contributing members have to be active in the free software
> world in some way.
> contributing members can vote on board members and resolutions
> supporting members can not vote, but can propose resolutions
>
> ADVANTAGES:
> - voting is easier since there will be less people who have to vote
> - voters will be more informed since they're more active
> - SPI still gets the large membership base
>
> DISADVANTAGES
> - you need to define contributing (that's not hard) and somehow verify
> that the member is contributing. A neat idea would be two year
> memberships and at the end of the two years you have to send a mail
> stating what you've done in the last two years for the community.
> - more administrative work- the membership committee has to worry about
> all this
> - do we _want_ to create a difference between members? i.e. the
> discussion is going and someone says 'but I'm a contributing member and
> you're not!' Yuck. Ugly.
Bad, very bad. There is only ONE way I'd consider accepting divided
memebership and that would be individual/project. That would be it and Ean
and I have very opposite views on how that should be organized so I won't
get into it. Even then, we both agree it would be "flat" WRT privilages.

> Scenario 3:
> -----------
> only contributing members are allowed. (I personally don't like this
> option at all.)
>
> DISADVANTAGES
You forgot the most imporant DISADVANTAGE. Loss of focus. SPI is supposed
to exist to promote the interests of Free Software. How does it do this?
By an eleet membership roster! I don't think I could even support such a
closed organization. At the very least, this option should go against
everything SPI stands for.. or was formed to stand for. I suppose it's an
option, but it should be considered about as much as far as it takes to
throw it out.

I think one useful concept is to have representative minority veto be
part of the equation. So that there is a special class of members
(board or directing members, if you will) that can fabricate potential
new policies. In certain cases (controlled by policy) there should be
resolutions that can be voted in with a 5 or 7 day veto period. Some
items might be whether a license is Open Source or something like that.

If the motion survives the veto period without recieving a representative
minority veto then it passes. Reasonably, I cannot see much of any
situation that requires such a quick turn around. The only thing I can
think of is press releases representing community opinion. This, however,
is difficult and slow to assess and reasonably could not be fabricated
in a short time frame.

On Thu, Mar 18, 1999 at 05:38:29PM -0500, Nils Lohner wrote:
> I have had several discussions with Ian, Joey, and Dale about this, and
> this will be the first time those thoughts are really put down in writing.
> Eventually it would be nice to have a document that contains all of the
> rationales behind the articles- that way people can see the 'spirit of the
> law' as well as the letter.
>
> Actually, before the real 'writing' I'd like to outline a few possible
> scenarios. I'm not sure which one makes most sense... all have their
> advantages and drawbacks. I'm somewhat torn between scenarios 1&2- I'm
> not sure which is better suited to SPIs goals.
>
> I'd like to figure out which scenario makes the most sense (and why!!) and
> then figure out the details, and then actually write the bylaws article.
> When commenting on this, please don't just ask questions- also try to
> propose solutions at the same time.
>
> Discussion season is open.
>
> Nils.
--
__________________________________________________________________
Ean Schuessler A guy running Linux
Novare International Inc. A company running Linux
*** WARNING: This signature may contain jokes.

I think we need to be clear what the purpose of the membership is,
from the point of view of the organisation. From my point of view,
that purpose is control and accountability. That is:

The membership should/will control SPI, and SPI's board and ultimately
everyone that acts for SPI will be held accountable to the membership.

So, given what SPI's purpose is (broadly speaking, to help the free
software development community by doing certain things that require
legal personality), we can see that that membership ought to be the
people who are supposed to benefit from SPI's abilities as a legal
entity: free software developers.

I see a very real risk that if SPI ends up legally owning significant
amounts of copyrights, patents, trademarks, money and other property,
it could easily become an effective target for `hijacking' by sudden
large numbers of new members, in order to wrest control of SPI's
assets away from their intended purposes. This kind of thing is
already happening regularly to eg Building Societies[1] in Britain.

[1] A Building Society is a mutual society. It's a financial
institution, a bit like a savings and loan.

I don't think we can rely on SPI's charter and contracts/trusts with
associated projects to protect us from this kind of thing. Instead,
we need to make it difficult for `just anybody' to become a voting
member.

Therefore, I'm very strongly opposed to Nils's Scenario 1, with a
completely flat and open membership.

Instead, I believe that voting membership should be open to
individuals who have contributed significantly to the free software
community. This will, unfortunately, require some effort to
administer, but the alternatives (dictat by the Board vs. the
possibility of hijacking) are much worse.

I don't particularly care whether there is an additional non-voting
`associate membership' or some such. There seems little point though
- what is the purpose of these associate members ? Just to make them
feel good ?

Ian.

On Thu, Mar 18, 1999 at 17:38:29 -0500, Nils Lohner wrote:
> Scenario 2:

> DISADVANTAGES

> - do we _want_ to create a difference between members? i.e. the discussion
> is going and someone says 'but I'm a contributing member and you're not!'
> Yuck. Ugly.

In some sense, we already have this in Debian, with the difference between
users and developers. Not often do I see developers "pull rank" over users.
And I agree with Ian that there is an difference between free software
developers and free softare community members we shouldn't deny.

On Fri, Mar 19, 1999 at 14:42:42 +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> So, given what SPI's purpose is (broadly speaking, to help the free
> software development community by doing certain things that require legal
> personality), we can see that that membership ought to be the people who
> are supposed to benefit from SPI's abilities as a legal entity: free
> software developers.

Agreed. The free software community is larger than the free software
developers though, and I think it is important that members of the free
software community that are not free software developers can participate
to SPI to some degree.

> Instead, I believe that voting membership should be open to individuals
> who have contributed significantly to the free software community. This
> will, unfortunately, require some effort to administer, but the
> alternatives (dictat by the Board vs. the possibility of hijacking) are
> much worse.

Agreed (for voting membership of contributing members).

> I don't particularly care whether there is an additional non-voting
> `associate membership' or some such.

I don't think your line of reasoning requires that an "associate membership"
be non-voting. For instance, many democracies have a two-tier voting system.
"associate members" could have the vote in the same way as the British House
of Commons, with "contributing members" acting as a House of Lords: senior
members of the community, that can overrule resolutions approved by the
associate members.

> There seems little point though - what is the purpose of these associate
> members ? Just to make them feel good ?

No. To ensure the participation/representation of the free software
community as a whole in SPI.

Ray
--
J.H.M. Dassen | RUMOUR Believe all you hear. Your world may
jdassen(at)wi(dot)LeidenUniv(dot)nl | not be a better one than the one the blocks
| live in but it'll be a sight more vivid.
| - The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan

On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Ian Jackson wrote:
[out of order clipping]
> I see a very real risk that if SPI ends up legally owning significant
> amounts of copyrights, patents, trademarks, money and other property,
> it could easily become an effective target for `hijacking' by sudden
> large numbers of new members, in order to wrest control of SPI's
> assets away from their intended purposes. This kind of thing is
> already happening regularly to eg Building Societies[1] in Britain.
>
> [1] A Building Society is a mutual society. It's a financial
> institution, a bit like a savings and loan.

I agree, though I was afraid I was being somewhat paranoid.

>
> Instead, I believe that voting membership should be open to
> individuals who have contributed significantly to the free software
> community. This will, unfortunately, require some effort to
> administer, but the alternatives (dictat by the Board vs. the
> possibility of hijacking) are much worse.
>
> I don't particularly care whether there is an additional non-voting
> `associate membership' or some such. There seems little point though
> - what is the purpose of these associate members ? Just to make them
> feel good ?
>

I was thinking of a two tiered membership in the following way.
[level 1] (significant contributors to free software)
right to vote on all policy issues
can serve on all committees
[level 2] (enthusiasts)
can vote on non-policy issues (times/places of general meetings,
SPI t-shirt design, other things that organizations
do that don't affect their policy direction).
can serve on minor committees (non-policy committees) (?)

Major committees (those making policy decisions/recommedations) would
have their membership voted on by level 1.
Minor committees could have their membership voted on by everyone.
This is because, while enthusiasts might not be good programmers, they
still might be very good at evangelizing and spreading the word.
Actually, it's likely there are be non-programming types who are much
at PR than the programmers.

This brings me to a question, which is what exactly will count as
contributing to the free software community. Presumably, this does not
mean _only_ developers, but also people who write documentation, or are
heavily involved in spreading the good word, or volunteer to do the dirty
work behind any organization (setting up tables for a public meeting comes
to mind). Possibly some kind of record of volunteer hours could be kept
and once someone had exceeded those hours they could go from enthusiast to
significant contributor. Another possibility is to have a committee
dedicated to membership decisions. In cases where a dispute arises
(personal conflicts, probably) a general vote could be requested, and if
a majority vote in favor, that person would go to level 1. (members not
sending in their votes within some specified time would be presumed to
be voting no, to prevent a large time wastage by frivolous disputes).
I would also think membership should be subject to renewal. If a
developer stops working on free software for, say, a year, then s/he's
off level 1. Same with members who get in by volunteering - they'd
need to keep up their efforts. After some time, say 5 years, level 1
membership would become permanent, barring some action fundamentally
contrary to the nature of SPI (voted on by 3/4 majority). Of course,
there are a number of folks who would be grandfathered in now as permanent
members.

There are other variations on this (perhaps only permanent members
[level 0] could serve on the board?).

Anyway, I do think there is good reason to have an enthusiast level
membership. They would be on the [snail] mailing list for promotions and
such as well. Plus, it's just plain good sense to include your users -
that's one of the reasons free software works so well (I think).

Lynn

On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Ian Jackson wrote:

> I think we need to be clear what the purpose of the membership is,
> from the point of view of the organisation. From my point of view,
> that purpose is control and accountability. That is:
>
> The membership should/will control SPI, and SPI's board and ultimately
> everyone that acts for SPI will be held accountable to the membership.
>
> So, given what SPI's purpose is (broadly speaking, to help the free
> software development community by doing certain things that require
> legal personality), we can see that that membership ought to be the
> people who are supposed to benefit from SPI's abilities as a legal
> entity: free software developers.
>
> I see a very real risk that if SPI ends up legally owning significant
> amounts of copyrights, patents, trademarks, money and other property,
> it could easily become an effective target for `hijacking' by sudden
> large numbers of new members, in order to wrest control of SPI's
> assets away from their intended purposes. This kind of thing is
> already happening regularly to eg Building Societies[1] in Britain.
>
> [1] A Building Society is a mutual society. It's a financial
> institution, a bit like a savings and loan.
>
> I don't think we can rely on SPI's charter and contracts/trusts with
> associated projects to protect us from this kind of thing. Instead,
> we need to make it difficult for `just anybody' to become a voting
> member.
>
> Therefore, I'm very strongly opposed to Nils's Scenario 1, with a
> completely flat and open membership.
>
> Instead, I believe that voting membership should be open to
> individuals who have contributed significantly to the free software
> community. This will, unfortunately, require some effort to
> administer, but the alternatives (dictat by the Board vs. the
> possibility of hijacking) are much worse.

Up to this point I agree. I believe that prospective members must show
some proof of participation. Obviously Debian developers have all the
proof that they need, and members of other supported projects as well.

Authorship of a piece of free software should also qualify.

I suspect that it will take some kind of "membership committee" to decide
on the less obvious cases.

>
> I don't particularly care whether there is an additional non-voting
> `associate membership' or some such. There seems little point though
> - what is the purpose of these associate members ? Just to make them
> feel good ?
>
I had the same feeling until it dawned on me that associate members are a
path to full membership. If you want to be productive and helpful in the
Free Software community, you become an associate member of SPI where you
can do productive work that will earn you a full membership. Something
like the, each member must do work for SPI at least once a year, clause
that currently exists (I think).

While it isn't clear to me just what "jobs" would be available to these
folks, I think that it is worth considering.

Waiting is,

Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_-

aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769
Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road
e-mail: dwarf(at)polaris(dot)net Tallahassee, FL 32308

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