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

[Marc Mutz]

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On Wednesday 27 November 2002 01:01, Dirk Mueller wrote:
> On Die, 26 Nov 2002, 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...
> >
> > All in all the KDE e.V. is again as anonymous and unaccountable to
> > me (as a member) as it was before August, already a few months
> > after the meeting.
>
> KDE e.V. is not a steering commitee.

Cool down, will you? Where did you read that in my last mail?

> There are 3 things it has to do:
>
> a) collect donations to KDE
> b) reimburse expenses of KDE (developers)
> c) own the KDE property (i.e. servers)
>
> Thats pretty much it. I don't see how this can be a big anonymous and
> full of bad intentions organisation. Maybe people think of it as the
> evil because they don't know about it, and never cared enough to
> inform themselves.

You must have replied to another mail. I don't think KDE eV. is "evil". 
I just criticize it's apparent lack of transparency and the lazyness in 
which the board apparently works.

Look, my first contact with the eV was when I wanted to get 
reimbursement on the ticket for CeBIT this year. That was the time when
1. Mirko was the only one still running the eV
2. Mirko had lost his old email address and not updated the pages with 
his new one.
End result was that I had to pay for the ticket myself, which is OK in 
hindsight, though at that time it was not.

Then I was invited to Hamburg and become a member. We discussed many 
things there and ended up with pretty much that would have been worth 
publishing. But the least part of it was published until after 
recently.

I waited for the results on the KDE cutlure brainstorming to be made 
public to have a location to point Don to, then. They never were.

Plus, the new members should have been subscribed to the members list, 
yet I never received a mail from that list. Mirko said we should drop a 
note if we (the new members) didn't hear from them in a week's time or 
two. I did drop a note regarding that to the board that was never 
answered.

Intevation GmbH donated EUR 200 left from the Aegypten project to the eV 
in late June or early July. By August 22, they still had no 
i18n(Quittung) for it and were not put on the donator list page. By 
Sept 24th, they _still_ hadn't received an answer from the eV.

If your experience with the eV was more positive: good for you. But 
don't try to forbid me criticizing the eV for what I think is still 
it's biggest drawback.

> Besides KDE being an open internet project, it still has to care
> about real-life things. Like owning the hardware. Protecting and
> supporting individuals when they're sued for work they did for KDE.
> Supporting KDE development.
>
> Thats it. And I also don't see why it is so difficult to grasp that.

The point was that it's less reponsive than it could and shoud be. That 
it is less communicative than it could and should be. Esp. since the 
board now holds four supposedly active people again. A few postings 
about the outcome of the Hamburg meeting on core-devel would have been 
a nice start.

> > 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. :-(
>
> You don't have to be a member if you think the KDE Project can live
> without KDE e.V.
>
> What do you like more?
<snip>
> What do you like more?
<snip>
> What do you like more?
<snip>
> What do you like more?
<snip>
> What do you like more?
<snip>
> What do you like more?
<snip>
> If you think to all these questions that the KDE e.V should not have
> the power to do it then you're pretty much alone I'm afraid, and it
> might indeed be better for you to not being a KDE e.V. member.

Nice rhethoric, but totally missing the point. To state it clearly:
1. I don't think KDE e.V. has no place in KDE.
2. I do know what it's tasks are. I _was_ in Hamburg, remember?
3. My thoughts on letting myself be set to passive membership stem from 
the fact that I currently don't see a difference between being a member 
and being not.

Marc

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