This message was initially circulated on an ASF internal list. Surfacing
here to make the discussion visible to those who aren't members of the
foundation in an effort to make it as accessible as possible. Moving the
internal list to BCC:
@those two who answered internally before I could move it here: It would
be lovely if you could see, if any of your points could be posted in
public as well.
> Caveat: I'm not sure, if this discussion shouldn't actually be over
> on some public list. At least some of the results should be public
> somewhere.
I got feedback that the below could be discussed in public, though some
parts might be confusing to those not deeply involved as members of the
foundation. If there are things in here you do not understand, please
don't hesitate to ask for links to background information.
Hi,
in his questions to the board, Daniel Gruno included one that I believe
is very interesting:
Which roles do you envision moving towards paid roles. Is this the
right move, and if not, what can we do to prevent/delay this?
https://s.apache.org/board-questions-2018
I took me seeing the following talk to get a vague understanding of the
dynamics at play when we start talking vendor neutrality at the
foundational level:
https://archive.fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/corporate_shenanigans/
https://www.slideshare.net/MikeMilinkovich/corporate-shenanigans
I would like to figure out the dynamics at play at the ASF and how they
impact us. Please bear with me - those who were here for nearly two
decades will need to do a lot of explaining.
What roles do we have at the ASF?
-------------------
project committers - volunteers, expected to make decisions in the best
interest of their project.
Source of conflict of interest: often paid by an employer who has a
vested interest as they are either using the project or helping
customers (in return for money) use the project or because their product
is built on top of the project.
How to capture? Hire the majority of committers or even all of them.
Current counter measure: PMC oversight - scalpel vs. hammer.
We mildly care if ppl go away here - communities are expected to be
open for new people to flow in, if all else fails and there are no users
to step up and help the project either personally or by funding it's
developers projects go to the attic, harm done: potentially grumpy users.
-------------------
pmc members - volunteers, otherwise same as above. Current counter
measure against capture: Education and board oversight - hammer vs. scalpel.
-------------------
infra - used to be all volunteers recruited from projects, I would guess
they used to by paid by their employers.
I don't see a "how to capture" risk here.
We do care if they go away - so what we did was to hire contractors,
hire an Infra Admin. There is still a volunteer providing oversight.
We do care about budget conflict of interest, that's why Infra Admin
is no longer on the board approving his own budget.
-------------------
... ?
-------------------
Three observations:
I)
I don't believe in volunteers doing extensive amounts of unpaid work. No
matter what time zone I traveled to, days always had 24hours. Assuming
people need 8 hours of sleep, work for 8 hours, spend 1 hour commuting,
spend 3 hours for breakfast, lunch and dinner this leaves us with 4
hours a day (and I'm sure I forgot something here - in my first
iteration I forgot about eating). So if we expect people to work here,
- either their employer will pay for their time (if they get permission
to contribute time during working hours). This makes us dependent on
capable volunteers having a day job that is not only fun for them but
also allows them to spend time at the ASF. It also means that those
employers get an advantage in terms of influence who can afford to hire
an ASF person just to work at the ASF. Are those the dynamics we want?
- or they will work here after-hours which means that either their
family or their health will pay for the work done here.
II)
I do see how having to pay to gain access to resources puts smaller
players at a disadvantage. That's something I would want to avoid.
I do see how having to pay to gain influence (e.g. paid board seat) puts
smaller players at a disadvantage. Again that's something I would want
to avoid.
I do see how professionalizing means that volunteers with limited time
resources will have trouble keeping up and getting involved. We have
seen this happen in our projects. I would guess it to be equally true at
the operational level. Is that something we want to solve? (Me
personally I'm grateful for having been given the behind the scenes look
as a director w/o having to change jobs, the opportunity to work with
the experienced ppl we have here). Is that something where we have
patterns/ experience how to deal with it? Given the number of projects,
I'd be surprised if that was a new problem to have.
III)
I don't see how turning volunteer positions into paid ones removes the
risk of people walking away - it merely makes that risk smaller (notice
periods help, the need for other employers to offer significantly more
money than we do also helps ...). I do see us repeatedly in a position
where we need to find replacement for someone on short notice. I do
believe we need to do more than just hope for payment to remove that
risk. The term succession planning comes to mind, in particular this talk:
https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/community_passing_the_batton_foss_leadership/
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