discuss: Staff Election was Re: LDP Committee?
Subject:
Re: Staff Election was Re: LDP Committee?
From:
"Bas v.d. Wiel" ####@####.####
Date:
8 Mar 2005 12:45:26 -0000
Message-Id: <422D9E4C.7080903@extranet.kompas-media.nl>
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<rant>Is TLDP a legal entity? If not, this whole discussion about who
is or is not "staff" seems to me quite pointless. You either are
employed by said entity and are therefore "staff", or you may be a
member if the entity is an association.. in that case you don't have
"staff" but possibly an elected board of directors. Which is totally
different from the idea of having a staff. TLDP is not a company and
it would be folly to attempt to run the project like one since we're
not making any real money that we can use to hire people.
Either TLDP becomes a full fledged legal entity in the form of an
association (probably), and the more active volunteers can become
(paying?) members. Members in an association have the right to vote on
decisions that the entity makes. If the association gets unwieldy, the
members may appoint a board of directors in a democratic way. The core
association with its members should the call the shots, with outside
volunteers still being allowed to contribute in whatever way they see
fit. They just don't have a vote on anything concerning the direction
or organisation of TLDP. It'd be a take it or leave it deal for
volunteers. Want influence? Pay your contribution and become a member,
then you can vote on decisions. Paid membership has the added benefit
that there is a small fund from which things like representation at
Linux community events (fairs like Cebit, Comdex, LinuxTag) can be
sponsored or maybe in time we can have actual books printed and
published at a modest profit to cover expenses. Just some ideas.
That's how associations work here in the Netherlands, and I don't
think it's that much of a bad idea. However you do have to go all the
way with this and actually register a legal entity somewhere or just
make do with what you have: a loosely knit club of volunteers. If
we're all volunteers, there's no use in voting for anyone since we're
all free to take our own marbles and go play elswhere at whatever time
we like without accountable. Indeed some volunteers are more active
and productive than others, but that's a fact of life in any volunteer
organisation.
Personally I applaud the idea of job descriptions as a start towards a
clear organisational structre. Of course we're not hiring people and
making harsh demands on delivery, they're volunteers. However they do
give a good idea of the organisational structure you're aiming for
and, as fas as I'm concerned, it's the only way to actually flesh out
a real structure to begin with. If this were up to me, I'd say one of
the more senior TLDP volunteers sketches out a basic structure and we
simply go from there.
Once there's general agreement (no need for unanimity, just a solid
majority) among most of us, we can start fleshing out the job
descriptions mentioned earlier. Everyone is free to apply for whatever
job he or she wants, but a description would help in selecting jobs
that a candidate is more fit for. You really don't want a hardcore
PHP/Perl/Python coder who speaks English as a third language in charge
of your English language reviews, but he'd be great as a developer for
the underlying infrastructure of TLDP. It's a matter of talents and as
soon as a single position has too many applicants there can always be
some sort of voting process put into place, if that's even necessary
at all.
In the end TLDP only needs its contributors to be in the positions
where they are most productive matching their talents and interests.
Maybe we don't need six webmasters, but there's always room for task
delegation and some redundancy in staffing.. which is great in a
volunteer organisation where day jobs tend to get in the way of work
for TLDP. I know it happens for me.
Maybe then, in the future, when this structure is firmly in place and
everyone knows what the others are doing it would make sense to
actually formalise it into a legal association with an actual chance
of success.
~ </rant>
Whew.. back to the distraction I call my day job ;-)
Kind regards to all,
Bas
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