On 8/29/20 7:01 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
On Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 6:47 PM james <gar...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 8/29/20 4:49 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
Perhaps a read only mechanism could publish all of that financial data?
Perhaps timely data entry, should be a requirement?
As part of the cleanup Robin has published a fair bit of this stuff on
the Foundation wiki (on the Gentoo wiki). I'd encourage those
interested to browse.
The stuff that is private (account nos, payees, etc) is in an
infra-hosted private git repo. That is actually a big improvement
because a lot of the problems came from it being in a box at
somebody's home for a number of years, which made it hard to tell what
was going on, and without going into details we'll just say that
reports were not always accurate.
Can/will you summarize the collective reason to get rid of the
Foundation or any other component of Gentoo management? If they are not
being paid, why the rush to terminate?
So, mgorny outlined a lot of that on the blog. The concern is that
we've finally gotten to a clean state, and now we ought to figure out
where we're going while we're STILL in a clean state.
Otherwise our bus factor is pretty low before things start slipping
again, and if we get out of compliance then changing things will be
harder.
Are there resources for access to those discussions, meeting minutes
notes and such? Audio recording of meetings or some sort of summary?
Just about everything is on the Foundation wiki pages, or the -nfp
list (which is archived). I recommend browsing the recent history if
you're interested - it is a very low-traffic list. Discussions on the
fate of the Foundation can be a bit noisy, but you can just skip any
really long threads if you're looking for more housekeeping stuff.
The Trustee meeting minutes on the wiki is where much of the meat is,
though the community discussion leading up to decisions tends to be on
the lists.
Redundancy, is a key component of most all of computer science. Trust,
but verify, is another fundamental tenant. If your want formal
references, its under the blanket term of 'Fault Tolerance'. I write
this for the benefit of all readers.
This is what I'm really getting at. And really this is what I mean by
cloud. I don't mean moving everything from a non-replicated infra to
a non-replicated single cloud provider. I mean trying to move to more
distributed technologies so that we can be replicated on many
providers, which could be cloud or individually hosted or whatever.
Unfortunately while this is very straightforward for git it isn't so
straightforward for a lot of other stuff, in particular bugzilla.
I trimmed down the reply quite a bit because much of what you asked
about is largely already discussed or I don't have much to add. There
are pros and cons to all the options and I don't think anybody
questions that. This is part of why we're in analysis paralysis.
So, my take-aways are:
1. Find the links and read up on what has occurred, to date.
2. Follow up on convencing the leadership (?) to use GNUcash, with real
time postings and read privileges.
3. Trying to figure out 'why' Gentoo leaders are balking at converting
to a '501(c)'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/501(c)_organization
4. Clearly expressing that it is OK for folks and corps to use Gentoo's
code_base to make money. Although, there are no current 'payola'
requirements when making money using gentoo, that can easily be change
by those in control. Were Gentoo to convert to a '501(c)' corp, we the
users and purveyors of Gentoo would have legal rights to use Gentoo to
make money. Since Gentoo is a privately help corporations, it is trivial
to reverse any standards of business practice, fees and such, at the
sole discretion of those in control. So, based on decades of experience,
I'd strongly suggest converting to a 501(c) corp.
5. It is very, very wrong for Gentoo to stay organized as a "for profit"
corporation. Because, that means the contributions to Gentoo, become the
property of the for profit corp. Although it is not a current exploit,
it is not illegal (but maybe immoral) to massively change direction.
Profiteering from the good works and contributions of the many, to the
glutinous benefit of the few, is a constant, recurring theme among
corporations.
Precedence has already been set. Smarty-Pants took Gentoo and for
CoreOS, which was then sold to Redhat. Redhat was subsequently purchased
by IBM. Millions and Millions of dollars change hand.
The same thing can easily happen to Gentoo, when an installation disc is
created. It's an economic windfall, just waiting to happen.
It's a deception, in the eyes of the court system. And yes, there are
huge ramifications for such actions. But, as previously pointed out,
finding enforcement is a challenge. The IRS constantly 'wheels and
deals' behind the scenes, if you have the right attorney. Gentoo, if
it had a robust installation CD, would be worth about One Billion
Dollars, or more. So by simple creating that install CD, the corporate
owners and managers could reap in Millions and Millions of dollars,
whilst leaving the faithful 'high and dry'.
Please lead the effort to convert Gentoo to a 501(c) corp? Perhaps a
preliminary (non binding) vote by the senior devs, the council and the
trustees, where the results are published, is a method to bust the
analysis paralysis. Public exposure and pressure can guide Gentoo into
a proper pristine global position, and become short listed with many
projects.
A private corp?...................Criminal.
Me? I'd publically expose those who are against converting to a 501(c)
organization. You may want to be more gentile with those with nefarious
intentions. I've had to 'whip some ass' too many times for this sort of
nefarious collectives.
sincerely,
James Horton, pe
