On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 07:07:45PM -0500, Tony Sebro wrote:
On 02/11/2015 06:57 PM, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 05:31:08PM -0500, Tony Sebro wrote:
Inkscape's PLC is already bound by Conservancy's conflict of interest policy [1].
Fwiw, this is the first I've seen of that.
Hmm. I'm fairly certain we sent the policy around to the project-reps@...41... address. If we didn't, I apologize. Either way, we need to do a better job of making sure that projects are aware of our organization's policy.
I don't recall receiving anything to or from a 'project-reps@...41...' address. Perhaps I got excluded? http://lists.sfconservancy.org shows no such list name.
The goal here is to prevent a corporation from taking control over the project by hiring PLC members and/or otherwise dominating the PLC, so that they could exploit Conservancy's nonprofit structure to handle activities that really should fall under their for-profit structure. It's not my intent to make this section onerous; we can discuss ways to make it fit Inkscape's community standards.
For much of the life of the project, Ted, Tim, and I all worked for Canonical, and served on the board as the project founders. Canonical could have cared less about Inkscape and had zero influence on board matters.
Presently Jon and I both work for Samsung, having both just recently joined there. Samsung cares even less about Inkscape than Canonical did. Yet if this provision goes into effect, one or the other of us will have to step down.
Understood. For what it's worth, I've never received anyone complain or insinuate that Inkscape is controlled or influenced by any one corporation. Still: if an issue were to come up in the future, the Inkscape Committee may benefit from avoiding even the optics of influence.
What if we moved from "more than one member employed" to "more than 1/3" or "more than 40%"? Would that give the Committee enough wiggle room going forward?
Probably should speak in fractions of sevenths, otherwise rounding is ambiguous. A hard limit of 3/7th would avoid majority control by any one employer while being flexible with membership.
Bryce
What if we moved from "more than one member employed" to "more than 1/3" or "more than 40%"? Would that give the Committee enough wiggle room going forward?
Probably should speak in fractions of sevenths, otherwise rounding is ambiguous. A hard limit of 3/7th would avoid majority control by any one employer while being flexible with membership.
Shouldn't it only really count if there are activities being performed on behalf of the company involved? Canonical and I doubt samsung probably never paid any time to inkscape development or management for any of their hires. And in that way Bryce et al are not hired by those companies on this project, but are self-hired.
For example I work for BasisTech on inkscape, a handful of hours a year as a contractor. Two BasisTech people on the board could be a problem. But I also have done work for the FSF, RedHat and a ton of others who never asked me to work on inkscape. For us contractors, we could quite quickly hit any number of limits if /any/ employment relationship counted. Some sort of declaration for board members about who they work on inkscape for (if any) in their board profiles would make that information transparent too.
Best Regards, Martin Owens
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 08:46:31PM -0500, Martin Owens wrote:
What if we moved from "more than one member employed" to "more than 1/3" or "more than 40%"? Would that give the Committee enough wiggle room going forward?
Probably should speak in fractions of sevenths, otherwise rounding is ambiguous. A hard limit of 3/7th would avoid majority control by any one employer while being flexible with membership.
Shouldn't it only really count if there are activities being performed on behalf of the company involved? Canonical and I doubt samsung probably never paid any time to inkscape development or management for any of their hires. And in that way Bryce et al are not hired by those companies on this project, but are self-hired.
I thought about that too, but I could imagine a case where if your employer had a commercial interest in $badthing, as an employee you might feel compelled to support it in voting, regardless of whether you were directly working on it or not, perhaps even regardless of your own personal opinion. After all, there do exist companies where publically expressing views counter to the company's position can be career-limiting or at least awkward...
For example I work for BasisTech on inkscape, a handful of hours a year as a contractor. Two BasisTech people on the board could be a problem. But I also have done work for the FSF, RedHat and a ton of others who never asked me to work on inkscape. For us contractors, we could quite quickly hit any number of limits if /any/ employment relationship counted. Some sort of declaration for board members about who they work on inkscape for (if any) in their board profiles would make that information transparent too.
Right, frankly for most of us, our Inkscape involvement is going to span multiple employers. I really doubt there's going to be much chance at all of any of us pushing corporate agendas. I trust that for the existing board members, even if all seven of us shared an employer I doubt it'd make much difference in our votes or activities.
But it's entirely possible that several dark horse candidates with employer loyalty conflicts of interests get nominated for board elections. I would like to trust the community would suss that out. I doubt the community would accidentally put bad actors onto the board. But if they do, having a hard limit could prove a useful check.
Bryce
On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 17:17 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 07:07:45PM -0500, Tony Sebro wrote:
On 02/11/2015 06:57 PM, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 05:31:08PM -0500, Tony Sebro wrote:
The goal here is to prevent a corporation from taking control over the project by hiring PLC members and/or otherwise dominating the PLC, so that they could exploit Conservancy's nonprofit structure to handle activities that really should fall under their for-profit structure. It's not my intent to make this section onerous; we can discuss ways to make it fit Inkscape's community standards.
For much of the life of the project, Ted, Tim, and I all worked for Canonical, and served on the board as the project founders. Canonical could have cared less about Inkscape and had zero influence on board matters.
Presently Jon and I both work for Samsung, having both just recently joined there. Samsung cares even less about Inkscape than Canonical did. Yet if this provision goes into effect, one or the other of us will have to step down.
Understood. For what it's worth, I've never received anyone complain or insinuate that Inkscape is controlled or influenced by any one corporation. Still: if an issue were to come up in the future, the Inkscape Committee may benefit from avoiding even the optics of influence.
What if we moved from "more than one member employed" to "more than 1/3" or "more than 40%"? Would that give the Committee enough wiggle room going forward?
Probably should speak in fractions of sevenths, otherwise rounding is ambiguous. A hard limit of 3/7th would avoid majority control by any one employer while being flexible with membership.
I'm curious if there isn't a way for a company to specifically declare non-interest in the project. While it would seem extreme, and probably difficult to get at larger companies, it might be a way handle the situation if it does become needed.
That being said, I wish we had a problem with too many companies being interested in Inkscape and fighting over board seats :-P
Ted
On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 08:39:32AM -0600, Ted Gould wrote:
On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 17:17 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 07:07:45PM -0500, Tony Sebro wrote:
On 02/11/2015 06:57 PM, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 05:31:08PM -0500, Tony Sebro wrote:
The goal here is to prevent a corporation from taking control over the project by hiring PLC members and/or otherwise dominating the PLC, so that they could exploit Conservancy's nonprofit structure to handle activities that really should fall under their for-profit structure. It's not my intent to make this section onerous; we can discuss ways to make it fit Inkscape's community standards.
For much of the life of the project, Ted, Tim, and I all worked for Canonical, and served on the board as the project founders. Canonical could have cared less about Inkscape and had zero influence on board matters.
Presently Jon and I both work for Samsung, having both just recently joined there. Samsung cares even less about Inkscape than Canonical did. Yet if this provision goes into effect, one or the other of us will have to step down.
Understood. For what it's worth, I've never received anyone complain or insinuate that Inkscape is controlled or influenced by any one corporation. Still: if an issue were to come up in the future, the Inkscape Committee may benefit from avoiding even the optics of influence.
What if we moved from "more than one member employed" to "more than 1/3" or "more than 40%"? Would that give the Committee enough wiggle room going forward?
Probably should speak in fractions of sevenths, otherwise rounding is ambiguous. A hard limit of 3/7th would avoid majority control by any one employer while being flexible with membership.
I'm curious if there isn't a way for a company to specifically declare non-interest in the project. While it would seem extreme, and probably difficult to get at larger companies, it might be a way handle the situation if it does become needed.
If it were a small company, then having an appreciable number of the board be employees of that company might be risky for other reasons. Unless the company was specifically in an Inkscape-related business, in which case the conflict of interest issue crops up.
If it's not a small company, then getting them to declare non-interest might be as hard as getting them to declare interest. Imagine if the 7 of us were employed as Walmart greeters; I suspect if we asked for some non-interest declaration they'd just dock our foodstamps and tell us to stop with these organizing activities. ;-)
That being said, I wish we had a problem with too many companies being interested in Inkscape and fighting over board seats :-P
Totally. I'm struggling just trying to get personal time off to attend the hackfest, let alone sponsorship or anything. "Don't take your personal time off for that, the connection to your work is loose and we'd rather want you at Linux Foundation events." Sigh.
Bryce
participants (3)
-
Bryce Harrington -
Martin Owens -
Ted Gould