* Dora Scilipoti <[email protected]> [2019-10-30 04:37]: > Hello, > > almost five days after submitting my request for subscription, it was > finally approved. And a few hours before the approval happened, the > moderation rules were updated with yet more restrictions, and this > particular point: > > Tue, 29 Oct 2019 10:31:37 +0100, Mark Wielaard wrote: > > And for governance discussions, they should stay on topic and be about > > governance. Discussions about individuals and their capabilities are > > off topic. > > What if I want to propose a governance model that includes someone as > head of a committee, for example. Am I not allowed to name and talk > about the qualities of the person I consider relevant for the position?
In regards to governance of GNU Project: - there shall be one division that takes care of exact wordings of the founder, all of the articles of the free software philosophy, including how founder was running the project, write-up of his responsibilities and duties, that would be "Planning Department" within Executive Division. There shall be one person or group of persons responsible in that department and also independent of everybody else in the organization, independent financially, maybe financed or paid by the FSF or by one percentage of donations or one fixed fee -- but with authority to bring any other staff member or position in the organization on the good course of action, back to the original direction as written and planned by the founder. That could be an attorney or attorney office even. They would need to have full authority over those actions. Even them could be replaced if people loyal to free software philosophy object in a certain manner and petition them. Let's call this position "Stallman's Works" or "Philosophy Officer" - then organization would need to be run in the same manner as it was run in successful manner in past. There could be chairman, presidents, staff members, etc. It does not matter. They would propose plans of actions, and they would adopt plans of actions. "Philosophy Officer" could strengthen such plans, or could object if they are not aligned with the philosophy. For example introduction of "open source" terminology should not be promoted on the main website. Even though individual contributors or maintainers are allowed to express their opinions as they wish. Not everybody need to be true to GNU Project "policies", but within the core organization, they shall remain true and promote it well. For example, if RMS was holding 50 speeches per year, such shall be continued, as that was successful action and "Philosophy Officer" would need to assign speeches to various people and also make sure that speakers give the message of free software philosophy, and not that they deviate in subjects like "which features of Windows or GNU are better or different to each other" -- as such subject would be contrary to free software philosophy, there is no alternative to proprietary software neither features are focus of the philsophy, we don't use proprietary software. Staying on purpose is important. RMS is handling community in very calm manner, he let people be most of time, that is not something that is written, but the manner of his handlings could be written down for the "Philosophy Officer" to understand and continue with it. RMS is opponent of censorship, when there was objection to the joke in glibc manual, and joke was about mainly about "Federal Censorship", which was construed as being "abort" joke, somebody proposed to censor the joke of the federal censorship. Unix and GNU and computing in general is accompanied of all kinds of jokes. The manner of handling a joke and insisting that it is brought back is also fight for the free speech and human rights. It is fight for what is right. That is one example, and such manner of handling issues (which is not written) is equally important in running the GNU organization just as the free software philosophy (which is written). In general, there shall be a write-up of all duties, positions, including contacts to organizations, and individuals which are important allies, and such write up better be signed by GPG, and published or accessible to those who are within the core organization. Jean
