Re: foundation application..

[Andrea Veri <av gnome org>]

2015-02-22 14:08 GMT+01:00 Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>:

> Again, a brilliant question. On the face of it this seems to be purely about
> reducing paper work for the membership committee (i.e. fewer applications
> means less work for them). However there are clearly some implications which
> affect our democratic processes. The question of whether we have a
> justifiable reason to take steps like this to deny this group of people a
> vote or not on the basis we worry they might not use it, is an important one
> because that does not objectively make sense. Clearly, the extra paper work
> shouldn't be a factor in decisions like this.

The Membership Committee actions are unequivocally oriented to the
benefit of the GNOME Foundation. I've been chairing the Committee
since five years now and this is honestly the first time ever someone
arises a controversial point on the policy and procedures we follow
when processing new or renewal applications. The following thread
started by Sriram with the pure scope of enhancing the membership
application experience it diverged into a crescendum of accusations to
the Membership Committee which clearly state the fact you are missing
the point of being a GNOME Foundation Member. From your point of view
being a Foundation member strictly relates to having made a
non-trivial amount of contributions (which is totally correct as per
Bylaws) but there's one more action the applicant should perform in
order for the application to be processed.

This action juridically speaking is an act of will. The person by
browsing [1] and filling in all the fields acknowledge its intent to
apply for Foundation Membership. Applying for membership is not an
obligation of any kind and you aren't required to submit an
application if you don't have a real interest in doing so. The
following announcement [2] (which seems to have caused so much
confusion between interns) is misleading in many ways and seems to
suggest interns they should apply - not because they believe in the
GNOME Foundation and the values it pursues - but for the mere reason
to keep a blog aggregated to Planet GNOME. If I was an intern myself
reading such an announcement and without having a knowledge of what
Foundation membership is about I could definitely started seeing the
membership itself as a way for my blog to stay aggregated on Planet
GNOME. There's no single reference of what Foundation membership is
about, what the duties are and what we are trying to accomplish in
terms of building a membership base made of people who really believe
in our mission, participate to the community discussions, vote on the
yearly elections. Many interns probably applied for Membership after
reading that announcement having in mind the fact having keeping their
public visibility through their blog was only possible if they
requested membership.

This totally goes against what Foundation membership is about. Our
mission - as the Membership Committee - is to make sure a strong and
consistent membership base is created in terms of contributors who
want to step forward and join the Foundation because they believe
doing so can definitely strengthen their relationship with the project
and bring it to the next level. As stated on my previous e-mail [3]
we've seen a lot of interns dropping their contributions to zero right
after the internship ended so while they contributed in a non-trivial
way to the Foundation why would they even decide to apply afterwards?
they are NOT obliged to apply for membership and they probably
wouldn't apply if they knew that being a member is not only receiving
a bunch of benefits but also being an active part of the community
participating to discussions and voting at every year's elections. The
rationale behind an extended period for interns isn't there because we
don't believe interns have contributed enough or because of their
gender (yeah, you even managed to accuse the Committee to apply
blanket rules depending on the gender of the applicant [4]) but just
to find out whether there was a strong and real interest in joining
the GNOME Foundation going beyond having a blog aggregated on Planet
GNOME.

While this thread (not how it started but how it diverged) is full of
accusations I don't recall hearing a single intern reaching out the
Committee complaining about her application being rejected. Not a
single case out of hundreds I personally processed since 2009. We
value our members and we always make sure to use our discretionary
power to further the goals of the GNOME Foundation, this in many ways:

1. by introducing Emeritus [5]
2. by supporting former members who have decreased the number of
contributions to re-apply and be accepted trying to encourage them
keeping up their valuable contributions over the project without
leaving

We aren't scared about having more paper work in place and we never
neglected to call for help in case we needed it. [6] [7]

The Membership Committee - as I see it - is here to make the
Foundation a welcoming place for every single contributor willing to
join (and not being forced to do so for a specific benefit to be kept)
and having a real, strong, durable interest in the Foundation and the
values it pursues. That's all we care about.

[1] https://www.gnome.org/foundation/membership/apply
[2] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-soc-list/2014-August/msg00000.html
[3] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2015-February/msg00087.html
[4] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2015-February/msg00123.html
[5] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2012-May/msg00015.html
[6] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2012-March/msg00046.html
[7] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2014-April/msg00045.html

-- 
Cheers,

Andrea

Debian Developer,
Fedora / EPEL packager,
GNOME Infrastructure Team Coordinator,
GNOME Foundation Board of Directors Secretary,
GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee Chairman

Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av