-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Sorry Terry... I am hijacking your thread because it's a good intro to
what we really need to be talking about. NB. I am posting this from my
moongroup.com address instead of my redhat.com address as I simply don't
have VPN available at the moment. See below for my comments. Sorry to
top post but I wanted to apologize to Terry for hijacking the thread
before I got into the meat of my comments.
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, terry(_at_)ashtonwoodshomes(_dot_)com spewed into the
bitstream:
Why the extra delay?
Why not make this an "authoritative" body amongst ourselves. No, it does not
have any legal
standing to force anyone to comply, but neither would the next council.
This council would have to trust that people would comply/abide decisions after
the council makes
reasoned consideration and a majority vote rules. (like any subsequent council
would have to anyway)
Making this a body whose only authority is to prepare another body with
(possibly) actual authority
sounds like more time lost.
Well... this is an interesting line of reasoning. You may actually be
right... what occurs to me is that if we don't have any by laws or
official organizational structure we have to have some way to get there
and that is what seems to be the concern.
When we formed the Linux Professional Institute we went through a phase
that was a bit like this. We started with an initial group of people who
lead the way through the formation of a legal non-profit entity and all
of those persons did end up with seats on the board. The way it actually
worked is that once the official incorporation was executed that
paperwork included an initial set of officers... those officers had a
meeting to elect the "official" board of directors. Because this type of
group is rarely formed as a public, or stock issuing organization it has
little if any true over sight from person outside the board of
directors. So, in essence, what this meant (and with respect to LPI it
still holds true) is that the organization is actually more of a "trust"
managed by directors who have oversight on it's direction but are not
elected as there is no system to accomplish it. When a member of the
board wants to resign the other board members must vote in a new member
to fill the seat. The way this is usually done is the outgoing member
will have been thinking for some time about possible nominees who would
do a good job for the organization... in every instance that I am aware
of that member would nominate that person and invite their attendance at
the outgoing members last meeting where the remaining members can vote
up or down on the new member.
In this way LPI was able to "boot strap" from a loose knit collection of
internet acquaintances with a common interest to an incorporated body
with by-laws and all the usual accoutrements. The upshot is that the
group, though it is incorporated, behaves more like a public trust than
a typical corporation with a profit motive.
- --
csm(_at_)moongroup(_dot_)com, head geek
http://moongroup.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFBlMr1v6Gjsf2pQ0oRAuYIAJ45U+on02MtP5+6KYUJsBLQ4LAa5gCeKuyQ
xrsIQVO+kUlNaQ5kZNTHMnE=
=nY0h
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----