KDE e.V. transparency (was: Re: Voting rights - the GNOME way)

[Rob Kaper]

On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 12:15:26AM +0100, Marc Mutz wrote:
> Not only from the outside! I am a KDE e.V. member since the Hamburg
> meeting. But other than in Hamburg, I've heard nothing from KDE e.V.  Mail
> addressed to the board was not answered; the KDE e.V. list is either dead
> or I was forgotten to be subscribed there...

I assume the board has to have a meeting at least once a month and that the
transcripts of those meetings should be available to all members? That was
pretty common for all organizations I have ever been a member off.. just
like the general member meeting approves budgets, elects the board..

> Don't get me wrong. The meeting itself was quite nice and productive, 
> but I do consider letting myself be set to "passive" membership (the 
> new membership status), since I don't see a difference between being a 
> member and not being a member anyway. But then, the board possibly 
> won't answer that request, too. :-(

Request a member meeting. Most statutes have a rule where a certain amount
of signatures (albeit it digital GPG ones) are sufficient that the board
*must* hold a general member meeting. At which the present members can place
a vote of non-confidence in the board and have it replaced with new
elections.

If the e.V. statutes don't have anything like that in place.. well, then I
don't know if we should trust the e.V. with any resources or as owner of
trademarks.

Btw, I'm sending in my membership application tonight (need a stamp to send
the paper copy). Once I'm approved (which I assume is just a formality), we
can hopefully define some true goals *and* procedures for the e.V. other
than the fuzzy mission statement that is now on the website.

What the e.V. (and KDE) needs is clear procedures on funds for booths (plus
hotel costs etcetera) and promotional goods.

Last year at LinuxTag there was quite some hassling to get the hotel paid
(either Etap was incompetent and Eva had to sort things out on the fly) while
stuff like that could easily be arranged with some procedures in place. Even
if the procedure is "pay for the room yourself and contact one of the e.V.
representatives with your proof of payment and you'll get a (partial)
refund from the ATM". Or whatever.

Rob
-- 
Rob Kaper     | Gimme some love, gimme some skin,
cap@capsi.com | if we ain't got that then we ain't got much
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