Re: Resolution 2007-02-15.jrk.1: Openness of Board Discussions

I propose the below resolution for a board vote at the March meeting,
since I have been told by the secretary that it is too late for a vote
at the February meeting. I apologize for its verboseness, but all of it
seems necessary to achieve its intended purpose. Improvements are
welcome.

--- begin resolution ---

Resolution 2007-02-15.jrk.1: Openness of SPI Decisionmaking

WHEREAS:

1. It is important that SPI contributing members be aware of the reasons
behind SPI board decisions;

2. SPI values transparency and wishes to maximize the ability of its
contributing members to oversee the performance of the board and
individual directors, and the ability of the general public to be aware
of SPI's activities;

3. Despite the foregoing, there are sometimes needs for information or
emails to remain confidential to the board or to the contributing
membership;

The SPI Board RESOLVES that:

1. The SPI board and officers shall conduct their important email
discussions on the spi-general mailing list whenever applicable
confidentiality expectations and requirements allow the general public
(including search engine indexes) to be privy to the discussion. All
board members are expected to read the spi-general mailing list. This
paragraph does not prohibit cross-posting mails to other SPI or non-SPI
lists or individual recipients in addition to spi-general.

2. The SPI board and officers shall conduct their important email
discussions on the spi-private list whenever paragraph 1 does not apply
and applicable confidentiality expectations and requirements allow all
SPI contributing members to be privy to the discussion. All board
members are expected to read the spi-private mailing list. This
paragraph does not prohibit cross-posting mails to other SPI or non-SPI
lists or individual recipients in addition to spi-private, except that
lists or individual recipients may only receive such mails as it is
acceptable for them to be privy to.

3. The SPI board and officers shall conduct their important email
discussions on the spi-board list (or the equivalent board email alias)
whenever paragraphs 1 and 2 do not apply. All board members are expected
to read the spi-board mailing list. This paragraph does not prohibit
cross-posting mails to other SPI or non-SPI lists or individual
recipients in addition to spi-board, except that lists or individual
recipients may only receive such mails as it is acceptable for them to
be privy to.

4. Throughout this resolution, "important email discussions" are those
which are likely to directly lead to a board resolution or other vote,
in which the general public or all contributing members should
reasonably have a say, which are relevant to the ability of contributing
members to oversee the performance of the board and individual
directors, in which the input of the general public or all contributing
members would reasonably be useful, or which would serve some other
useful purpose by being open to the general public or all contributing
members.

5. In cases where the topic of an important email discussion has already
been sufficiently discussed with the general public or with the
contributing membership that further discussion at that level of
openness would cause significant repetition of past, at least as public
discussions without providing any substantially new input, it is
acceptable for a lower level of openness to be used for any remaining
discussion on that topic. This in no way limits the applicability of
paragraph 6 to such situations.

6. Whenever the contributing members are not privy to the reasoning
behind a board decision or vote, and a request for an explanation is
received by the secretary from a contributing member, an explanation
shall be provided by either the secretary or another willing person who
is privy to the reasoning. This explanation shall be detailed enough so
that the contributing members can understand the reasons behind the
vote, except that in no case shall it breach any applicable
confidentiality expectations or requirements. Any quotes or opinions
attributed to specific people or organizations need to be reviewed by
those people or organizations, not only to avoid breaches of
confidentiality but also to ensure those quotes and opinions are
reflected accurately and with any necessary context. Board members are
requested not to withhold their accurately represented opinions from
this explanation without a very good and exceptional reason, such as a
use of otherwise confidential information as a necessary basis for the
opinion.

7. Whenever possible, the explanation required by paragraph 6 shall be
presented publically to a board meeting in a version suitably
non-confidential for the general public, approved by the board at the
board meeting, and appended to that meeting's minutes in the same manner
as an officer's report. Whenever this is not possible or more detail can
usefully be shared with the contributing membership without breaching
confidentiality, a version of the explanation with a level of
confidentiality suitable for contributing members shall be emailed to
the spi-private mailing list and approved at a board meeting without
the text of it being presented to the general public.

8. The secretary shall email the spi-announce mailing list with the text
of resolutions and meeting minutes approved by the board, in addition to
posting them on the SPI website.

--- end resolution ---

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Jimmy Kaplowitz writes ("Resolution 2007-02-15.jrk.1: Openness of Board Discussions"):
> I propose the below resolution for a board vote at the March meeting,
> since I have been told by the secretary that it is too late for a vote
> at the February meeting. I apologize for its verboseness, but all of it
> seems necessary to achieve its intended purpose. Improvements are
> welcome.

Thanks for that. I hope that no-one on the board will disagree with
any of it. Mostly it's things I have been trying to do anyway but it
will be helpful to have them formalised.

One thing that is left unclear is when a board member should take it
upon themselves to forum-shift a discussion to a more-public list, and
if so how that should be done. This is a constantly thorny problem
with some difficult tradeoffs. I would like to discuss how we should
go about that.

I would suggest something like the following:

* When a confidential matter is first mentioned, a clear statement
should be made of _what_ is confidential and _why_.

* If no such statement is present in a message from a Board member
or officer which starts a new thread on -board or -private then any
recipient of the message is entitled to:
- enquire as to the confidentiality status;
- follow up with a confidentiality statement;
- repost it to a more public venue and reply in the more
private venue to say that they have done so.
Every recipient should use their own judgement about whether there
is a need for confidentiality, and should err on the side of
minimising mistakes (ie, ask).

If a thread is forum-shifted in this way to a more public list,
then anyone who replies should reply in the more public venue,
unless they disagree with the forum-shift.

This policy specifically supersedes the right of Board members and
officers to the normal respect for the confidentiality of head
article emails they send to -board and -private, unless the sender
specifically states that they intend for the message to be
confidential.

* When the confidentiality status of a head article is made clear, the
whole thread will be taken to have the same confidentiality status.
New matters with different confidentiality properties should not be
introduced. Followups in confidential threads should not be
forum-shifted to more public venues.

Ian.

Jimmy,

(apologies for cross posting for anyone who is double-subscribed, but a lot of
members are not)

First, I don't think we should vote on this in Feburary. We've already passed
the deadline for agenda items, and I can't see this in any way as "urgent".
Also, you're violating our new procedures which require resolutions to be
posted to spi-private, NOT spi-general. For this reason, I've gone ahead and
cross-posted it.

Second, I'm unclear on the roles of spi-general vs. spi-private here. I'm
particularly concerned that many contributing members have unsubscribed from
spi-general because of prior spam issues. Also, quite frankly, I'm unclear
on why we even *have* an spi-general, given that the subscribers seem to be a
subset of spi-private. I think the purposes of the various lists from the
organization's perspective needs to be clarified before passing any such
resolution.

Finally, I'm not going to vote for this resolution unless I first see that
several to many contributing members think one is warranted. I personally
don't see a resolution as necessary; several members have made clear after
the opensource.org discussion that they expect greater transparency and the
board has responded through improved rules on notifications for board
business as well as plans to disclose the board@ discussion on that topic.
At this point, MJ is grandstanding and I won't cater to it.

--
Josh Berkus
Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
www.spi-inc.org

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 08:50:45AM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
> First, I don't think we should vote on this in Feburary. We've
> already passed the deadline for agenda items, and I can't see this in
> any way as "urgent".

Notice how I proposed it for the March meeting because it was too late
for the February one.

> Also, you're violating our new procedures which require resolutions to
> be posted to spi-private, NOT spi-general. For this reason, I've gone
> ahead and cross-posted it.

Which procedures are you referring to? The main procedures I see are in
this email:

From: Neil McGovern <neilm(at)spi-inc(dot)org>
To: board(at)spi-inc(dot)org, spi-private(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org,
spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
Subject: Publically viewable resolutions and increasing the visibility of
board activity
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 23:46:23 +000

Those procedures say that resolutions should be sent to spi-general
instead of spi-private unless they are private, legally sensitive, or
time sensitive, none of which apply here. (It also specifies secretary@
and board@, so I included those addresses as well.)

If you agree after reading the above mail that -general is more
appropriate than -private under our policy, please remove -private from
your reply to this mail so that we don't continue sending duplicates to
everyone on both lists.

> Second, I'm unclear on the roles of spi-general vs. spi-private here.
> I'm particularly concerned that many contributing members have
> unsubscribed from spi-general because of prior spam issues. Also,
> quite frankly, I'm unclear on why we even *have* an spi-general, given
> that the subscribers seem to be a subset of spi-private. I think the
> purposes of the various lists from the organization's perspective
> needs to be clarified before passing any such resolution.

spi-general is also open to non-contributing members and the general
public, including media organizations, Google's search index, Microsoft,
and random Slashdot users. Therefore I really doubt the subscribers are
a subset of -private. If you really want to know that for sure, check
with admin(at)spi-inc(dot)org(dot) By contrast, spi-private is only open to SPI
contributing members, won't be Googleable, and requires an inconvenient
mailman password to look in the web archives (which also aren't
searchable even to subscribers). spi-general is useful in the interest
of being transparent to the general public, especially those people who
are users of SPI member projects but not eligible for SPI contributing
membership. Most discussions don't require restriction to our membership.

As for the spam problem, instead of deprecating spi-general entirely,
I'd much rather have Joerg Jaspert (on our admin team) apply some of the
same automated solutions as he has to the DebConf mailing lists, which
don't have a spam problem without needing human moderation.

> Finally, I'm not going to vote for this resolution unless I first see
> that several to many contributing members think one is warranted. I
> personally don't see a resolution as necessary; several members have
> made clear after the opensource.org discussion that they expect
> greater transparency and the board has responded through improved
> rules on notifications for board business as well as plans to disclose
> the board@ discussion on that topic. At this point, MJ is
> grandstanding and I won't cater to it.

Whether MJ is grandstanding or not is besides the point. As of now, we
haven't actually approved any resolution regarding notifications for
board business, though one is on the agenda for tomorrow's meeting. That
resolution doesn't actually address a board policy on the level of
openness of our discussions or the level of justification we give for
decisions based on private discussions. Regardless of MJ's style of
debate, these are valid concerns that should be remedied. It will also
give us (hopefully) unambiguous guidance as to how to act in individual
situations where we are unsure, plus serve as a clear recommendation to
future boards which they would have to explicitly (and publically) vote
to change. All of which is good.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 12:18:02PM -0500, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> As for the spam problem, instead of deprecating spi-general entirely,
> I'd much rather have Joerg Jaspert (on our admin team) apply some of the
> same automated solutions as he has to the DebConf mailing lists, which
> don't have a spam problem without needing human moderation.

It looks like he has done this, in fact: the last spam I see in the
spi-general archives is back in June 2006, over half a year ago. It's
probably safe for you to resusbscribe. :)

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Jimmy,

> On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 12:18:02PM -0500, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> > As for the spam problem, instead of deprecating spi-general entirely,
> > I'd much rather have Joerg Jaspert (on our admin team) apply some of the
> > same automated solutions as he has to the DebConf mailing lists, which
> > don't have a spam problem without needing human moderation.
>
> It looks like he has done this, in fact: the last spam I see in the
> spi-general archives is back in June 2006, over half a year ago. It's
> probably safe for you to resusbscribe. :)

I'm not worried if *I'm* subscribed and receiving mail. I am. I'm worried
about the contributing members who said months ago that they had unsubscribed
because of the spam problem.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Project
Core Team Member
(any opinions expressed are my own)

(Josh, please remove -private on any replies to any of my mails in this
thread, unless you still think it's important for -private to be
included in addition to -general.)

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 09:30:48AM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
> I'm not worried if *I'm* subscribed and receiving mail. I am. I'm worried
> about the contributing members who said months ago that they had unsubscribed
> because of the spam problem.

As I said, it seems to be fixed for more than 6 months now, so we have
no need to shy away from -general for a silly reason like a spam problem
when it's the right list to use.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Jimmy,

> (Josh, please remove -private on any replies to any of my mails in this
> thread, unless you still think it's important for -private to be
> included in addition to -general.)

It is right now.

> As I said, it seems to be fixed for more than 6 months now, so we have
> no need to shy away from -general for a silly reason like a spam problem
> when it's the right list to use.

What I'm contending is that right now, today, we have dozens of contributing
members who are receiving mail from -private but not from -general. If all
contributing members need to pay attention to -general, we need to notify
them to resubscribe on -private *first*.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Project
Core Team Member
(any opinions expressed are my own)

[Josh Berkus]
> What I'm contending is that right now, today, we have dozens of
> contributing members who are receiving mail from -private but not
> from -general. If all contributing members need to pay attention to
> -general, we need to notify them to resubscribe on -private *first*.

Note that some of us read -general using gmane.org, and thus do not
subscribe directly to it. I do. :)

Friendly,
--
Petter Reinholdtsen

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 09:44:45AM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
> What I'm contending is that right now, today, we have dozens of contributing
> members who are receiving mail from -private but not from -general. If all
> contributing members need to pay attention to -general, we need to notify
> them to resubscribe on -private *first*.

Notification sent and received via -private. I also pointed them to the
online -general web archives in case they want to see what they have
missed so far. The archives will also be useful in that, if we move
fully public discussions to -general now, they can be informed of what
we say between now and when they resubscribe to general.

Now can we please remove -private and stop giving me *3* copies (direct,
-general, -private) of every email in this thread in my inbox, plus a
*4th* copy in my -board mailbox? (I am setting the Mail-Followup-To
header properly in my mails, so your client shouldn't be sending me a
direct response, but apparently it is. Even if you can't get the total
number of copies down to 2, having only 2 in my inbox plus 1 in my board
box would still be an improvement. You can also feel free to remove
"Jimmy Kaplowitz <treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org>" from the list; I put that in
out of habit in one of my mails, and it seems to be persisting.)

And, I did reply to your substantive objections to the resolution as
well. Your thoughts on my reply would also be welcome (on -general
please, optionally but not necessarily plus -board).

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 03:18:12PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> One thing that is left unclear is when a board member should take it
> upon themselves to forum-shift a discussion to a more-public list, and
> if so how that should be done. This is a constantly thorny problem
> with some difficult tradeoffs. I would like to discuss how we should
> go about that.
>
> I would suggest something like the following:
[suggestion snipped]

There has been no discussion about your suggestions between Feb 15 and
now, and I admit that I haven't figured out what I think the proper
answer to forum-shifting should be. Therefore, I'm not going to include
it in my resolution for today's meeting, but hopefully we can discuss
in the upcoming weeks and clarify that point in a resolution at the
April meeting. I'm certainly not opposed to such a clarification.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org