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

[Dirk Mueller]

On Mit, 27 Nov 2002, Marc Mutz wrote:

> > KDE e.V. is not a steering commitee.
> Cool down, will you? Where did you read that in my last mail?

I wasn't directly talking to *you*, just as a reply to the general moaning 
about things in this thread I picked your mail because it looked to me to be 
the best anchor to hook in my answer (as you ended with "I don't understand 
why I should be (active) member"). 

Sorry, nothing personal against you or anybody else in this thread. If it 
looked like that, I apologize. 

> 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.

KDE e.V. is not the board. KDE e.V. is what its members make out of it. 

> End result was that I had to pay for the ticket myself, which is OK in 
> hindsight, though at that time it was not.

The new board makes everything better ;-)

> 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.

If you think that things are missing, then please go for it and add them. 
there was a freaking long thread about the stuff on kde-ev-membership. the 
documents are in CVS, please fix the problems you see. 

> 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.

(You're talking about the revamp of the KDE manifesto right?)

The thing is not lost. But I think the long (and good!) discussion we had 
pretty much showed that the version we finished wasn't something yet we want 
to publish. At least I had this impression. 

One of the actions to fix things up for release was *exactly* this mailing 
list. But it is a separete mailinglist to allow KDE Project related policies 
to be discussed too (like how to become Release Coordinator, Rules for code 
in CVS etc). 

I made the suggestion to Harri to moderate this list more. And I don't mean 
censoring, I mean moderation. Thats like "The current topic to discuss is 
foobar thing. The current proposal of the policy is blubb. Please express 
your opinions till Wednesday in two weeks. We'll vote on it afterwards for 
it to become a valid policy". Unfortunately Harri didn't post this to the 
list (he left for vacation, I told him about this idea too late). 

Also the reason for the Hamburg report not being posted earlier is as far as 
I have heard that Andreas did not post it to the dot, like he was asked 
to do so.
 
Note this is hearsay, I haven't followed this. I fixed this as the problem  
came aware to me by asking Chris Howells to import the report to the 
kde-ev website (as this is where it should belong to IMNSHO anyway) and 
it happened within 20 minutes. 

Personally I'm a bit disappointed seeing Andreas talking bad about the e.V. 
here. Anyway. 

> 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.

Not sure why Mirko said that, but usually sysadmin@kde.org is a better place 
for complains about technical matters. 

I've subscribed mutz@kde.org now. 

> 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.

Did you contact Eva or Ralf about this? Mirko is in the US so its easier for 
Ralf or Eva to handle the germany-related tax donation confirmations 
(whatever they're called in english)

> 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.

I don't forbid. Just showing a different opinion, nothing more. You might 
want to talk down the lazyness of the board, and if more members agree, we 
can request an extraordinary meeting to get rid of the nonfunctioning board. 

But IMHO you should not talk down the *idea* behind e.V. (and as you said 
above you agree that it is a good idea. Not all have understood that yet). 

> 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.

kde-core != KDE e.V. 

> 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.

This point is mood as there is no active/passive membership status. You're 
either member or not. 

Or maybe I misunderstood you and you meant "passive member" as "somebody who 
is member and sits there like in front of the TV and watch the board to do 
something". Well, then thats again wrong understanding. The board is only 
there as executive, i.e. to pay expenses without having all of the members 
to agree to each and every bill. They're not there to entertain you, or to 
do your work. 

(you == KDE e.V. member, not you personally)


-- 
Dirk (received 63 mails today)