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

[Vadim Plessky]

On Wednesday 27 November 2002 8:12 am, Andreas Pour wrote:
|  Dirk Mueller wrote:
|  [ ... ]
|  > > 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.
|
|  That may have been the case had the statutes not been botched, but unless
| you are willing to travel to Germany for a meeting, the membership has
| nothing to say except by the grace of the board.  A board which has a
| private list and for which I have no idea what they do.  I'm sure MS
| employees have a better idea what their board does.  This is just wrong
| IMO.
|
|  Again, I would like to raise the point that KDE eV is *not* suited for its
|  purposes.  Yes, you Germans apparently don't give a crap b/c traveling to
|  Germany is no big deal for you, but by having a Germany-based organization
| we betray the fundamental principle of KDE that it is an international
| organization.  (It's not that its organized under German law, but the fact
| tha the German eV statutes are not suited for international projects.)

Andreas, what do you propose?
Move KDE e.V.to Switzerland, and make HQ in Geneva, close to United nations 
building? :-)

Seriously:  I understand your concerns quite well.
I have the same kind of thoughts.
To travel to Germany, I need German visa. And to get visa, I need inventation.
I am not sure wether KDE e.V. can *invite* someone to Germany, as you 
(probbaly) need to be registered in some ministries (Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs?), etc.

|
|  > > 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.
|
|  Making the KDE organization suitable for an international project?  Well
| the only thing to do there is convince people, but the ones comfortable in
| Germany apparently don't care about the rest of us, and as they have a
| majority, they rule.

I don't know what location can be more neutral, though.
I personally think of Prague (Czech Republic), as:
 * you can travel from Germany to Czech by car
 (so this location should not be a concern for people in Germany, like most of 
current KDE e.V. members)
 * life in Prague is much cheaper than in Germany; there is a lot of nice and 
inexpensive hotels, plus good beer ;-)
 * visa is easy to get (in case you need visa)
 * we have developers in Czech :-))
 * air tickets to US and back are really *inexpensive*.
My mind reminds me amount of $400 or so incl. flight back).

Consider this as an official proposal.
Opinions?

|  Ciao,
|
|  Dre
|  _______________________________________________
|  Kde-policies mailing list
|  Kde-policies@mail.kde.org
|  http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-policies

-- 

Vadim Plessky
SVG Icons
http://svgicons.sourceforge.net
My KDE page
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
KDE mini-Themes
http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/