Re: Outsiders, insiders, transparency, action (was Re: [OSCOM] Re: Michi resigns from OSCOM [Fwd: [Board] OSCOM ordinary meeting of members minutes])

On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 04:37:54PM +0100, Paul Everitt wrote:
> At a minimum, we should make it clear that members@oscom is confined  
> to matters defined in the bylaws.  The OSCOM *community*  
> (general@oscom) should run itself and not take orders from the legal  
> entity.

clearing that up on the site could help:
instead of talking about becomig an OSCOM member, maybe something like:

join the OSCOM community on the general mailinglist, and:
join the OSCOM organization (and explain what that is: election of the
board, boring formal stuff, etc)

> Perhaps in the future we can get rid of the latter -- the  
> legal entity -- by rolling it into some umbrella foundation (or just  
> closing it).

i don't think that is needed, it might just be the lack of a clear
definition of what is what.  it is not really a question of the legal
structure itself, but of how it is presented to the public.

in my opinion "OSCOM member" should be used to mean "member of the
community" since that is what is mostly meant when talking about OSCOM.

member of the legal entity OSCOM might called something else.

and, to throw in a suggestion for the future: allow the community to
nominate members. (i believe that communities are usually quite good at
figuring out who has the most merit)  membership might still need to be
approved so there is no danger of getting any black sheep in there.

greetings, martin.
-- 
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pike programmer   travelling and working in europe             open-steam.org
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Martin Bähr       http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/