Voting rights - the GNOME way

[Daniel Molkentin]

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On Saturday 23 November 2002 19:14, Navindra Umanee wrote:
>e.V. is.  The last I heard from KDE e.V., they were busy shutting down
>the kde-cafe list without a single public explanation from them.

First of all: Many people seem to percieve the e.V. as the pure evil. It is 
not. Basically (and this is my very personal idea), creating kde-cafe was one 
of the biggest mistakes PR-wise and the results were visible. For some time 
it appeared to me like pandoras box: Once opened, it did nothing good to KDE 
but just brought us bad PR in consequence. I don't want to make this list 
bad. Everyone likes just to talk, but the name KDE in it was the bad idea.

And the list was *not* closed down by the e.V. Tink as its maintainer was it 
who initiated the move it in a quick rush after she was told about the 
outcome of some discussions on the Hamburg meeting.

The other problem was the obvious @kde.org poster problem. If somebody posts 
with @microsoft.com these days, his opinion will be assessed as the official 
Microsoft Policy. As KDE gets in the spot of the media, this will occur to us 
more and more, too.

>When kde.org was managed by a few trusty persons like Martin, it
>seemed to work out fine.  They had a few simple rules as to who got a
>CVS account, who got a mail address, who could use a kde.org hostname
>and it was all fine and dandy.  

No it was not. Amost everyone who asked got an email address, getting a cvs 
account was not much harder (that doesn't mean it should become generally 
harder tho).

Face it: Having no rules makes it hard to say 'no'.

>If there was a problem, explanations
>were asked and given, the CVS account was closed or whatever and that
>was that. This was a nice arrangment and everyone trusts Martin and
>company.  They were essentially the maintainer of these services, and
>this was all operated in typical Open Source fashion.

And there were time when martin was busy and we all were waiting for a friggin 
box to be rebooted. Don't get me wrong, Martin did a good job, but being on 
someones mercy when it comes central infrastructure is not what I call 
desireable (although sometimes required on an opensouce project). I think you 
know what's going on if the server is only down for "just one day".

I also don't think we need too much policies within the e.V. While I agree 
that stuff like decisions over future release dudes needs more transparency, 
I think it is *not* task of the e.V. to develop rules for that. That should 
be somehow discussed on the development lists. (And by the way, finding 
someone to do that job is a tough job anyway).

OTOH I think the e.V. does have to decide when it comes to the kde.org domain 
(email addresses included). It should have policies for that. However, 
decision abouts rules for CVS accounts should not be met by the e.V., as this 
is clearly a pure development affair. Still, this process needs rules.

However, KDE e.V. as "protector of KDEs interest" should be able to step in 
when the owner of an account hurts the project, but all that can be settled 
on the lists in 99% of all cases and the e.V. Rules should reflect that.

This is one of the points most people seems to be afraid of: the e.V. won't 
unpack that sledgehammer (although poeple seem to have preceived in case of 
the kde-cafe list). 

>Now it's becoming complicated and the level of bickering and
>self-importance is rising.  I'm not sure why, but I guess it's a
>natural progression of a growing project which has created a
>significant body of work.

Well, all structures have a limit and KDE seems to have reached them on 
serveral occasions lately.

Cheers,
  Daniel

PS: Chris postet the final version of the Hamburg meeting to the dot. I hope 
this will bring back some clearity to the status of the e.V. and how it's not 
a big bold blackbox that wants to destroy all fun in the project.

- -- 
Daniel Molkentin <molkentin@kde.org> | The K Desktop Environment
KDE - Konqueror your Desktop!
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