----- Original Message ----
> From: Charles-H. Schulz <charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org>
> Le Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:05:50 +0200,
> "Gianluca Turconi" <m...@letturefantastiche.com> a écrit :
>
> > In data 19 ottobre 2010 alle ore 14:34:33, Charles-H. Schulz
> > <charles.sch...@documentfoundation.org> ha scritto:
> >
> > > I can understand why you want to make that distinction. My own
> > > interpretation, aside the fact that we stated at the beginning what
> > > we hear by "member", is that how we define the membership applies to
> > > anyone, but it is based on its role and contribution. An individual
> > > should be able to contribute and be recognized as a member. As
> > > such, no corporation, who might also be a member, shall be
> > > recognized as having a higher footing; contributions are what
> > > matters only. Perhaps I did misunderstand you there, but there is
> > > of course another kind of community, which is often referred as "an
> > > user community".
> >
> > Yes, it's likely you misunderstood me. :)
> >
> > I didn't mean the "user community", but the dev community itself.
> >
> > However, I think there's another important misunderstanding about what
> > *you* (Charles and Andre and maybe others) think a Foundation is and
> > what *I* think it is.
> >
> > According to me, a Foundation is a central, independent legal entity
> > that takes decisions about a productivity suite called LibreOffice
> > (BTW, who owns the trademark?): how to protect its code base (without
> > copyright assignment), how to further develop it, how to improve the
> > open source ecosystem around its development.
> >
> > That kind of things cannot be done without a formal and well defined
> > membership application.
> >
> > Contribution cannot be enough for a member's application acceptance,
> > because in my conception of Foundation, there are actual principles
> > that are not limited to "contribution".
> >
> > And they cannot be tested in the books ("I swear to respect the
> > Foundation's Charter") but they must be clear in the facts ("I'm a
> > well respected member of the community and I've always acted in good
> > faith in the past").
> >
> > I mean: this time, after what happened with Sun/Oracle, we need to
> > cancel any "gray zone" and keep in mind that ***Free Software***
> > comes first.
> >
> > A larger members' base is useless for a Foundation if those "gray
> > zones" are kept.
>
> So, if I understand you well, you do indeed raise a good question, but
> one which, to me, adds more gray zones. Let me rephrase how I
> understand your position: you are afraid that we're mixing the
> membership of the Foundation and the membership of the community, and
> that by mixing the two we would be putting the foundation itself (the
> legal object, the kernel as you called it) in jeopardy . Basically,
> every contributor could come around and harm the foundation. (Did I get
> this right?)
>
> If that's what you implied, I... sort of don't agree with you but at
> the same time see wisdom in your objection. We would need protect
> certain parts of the foundation from direct, daily interference.
> However, where I don't agree with you is that we should, provided a
> majority of contributors do agree, be in charge of our own destiny.
>
> This being said, I believe it's necessary to focus on the question of
> the membership, and separate it from the question of the foundation
> structure and its governance. Obviously, these questions are all
> related, but if we handle more specific ones, we'll be able to generate
> some valuable input I think.
>
Perhaps this could be resolve by two classes of membership?
One of a general community membership recognized solely as suggested, and one
that has a greater responsibility to TDF and TDFs agenda that also has a more
thorough check to enter into, perhaps with the community membership as a
pre-requisite requirement.
I think the primary concern being raised is one of someone becoming a member
for
subversion purposes, much like what Microsoft did to ISO for OOXML. While
Microsoft as an organization could not be a member, they certainly stuffed the
appropriate committees with their people (directly and indirectly through
partners)such that they were essentially the only voting entity. Since we are
aware that some organizations will stoop that to that level to get their agenda
through - whether it is a document format or simply to crush a competitor
(again, Microsoft has been known, and can be shown to currently, to push their
executives into an organization to subvert it for their agenda when the
organization is not doing what they want - e.g. pushing Windows).
I'm a bit of an outsider to this - one that would like to find a way of getting
more involved at some point, so please take it for what its worth.
Ben
P.S. Not meaning to pick on Microsoft here, they just have the best, most
recent, and most well known examples of the suggested bad-behavior that needs
to be protected again.
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