[haiku-inc] Re: Updating the donat-o-meter...
- From: "Michael Phipps" <michael.phipps@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-inc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 19:35:12 -0400
-----Original Message-----
From: "Karl vom Dorff" [karlvd@xxxxxxxxx]
Date: 10/03/2014 14:46
To: haiku-inc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [haiku-inc] Re: Updating the donat-o-meter...
I would like to see more detail of how you would implement the memberships and
elections. I thought long and hard about this and I want to see how your
conclusions match up to mine.
I will see if I can come up with something (although my offers for help here go
unheard or are unwanted so I am not sure its worth the effort).
I can tell you this - I dont think that rotating the board members would do as
much as you think. The issues are 1) lack of time and 2) lack of funds. In my
time at Haiku, I tried hard to get people to volunteer for stuff.
Non-development tasks. Few were interested and even fewer followed through.
Most of those who did are ON THE BOARD RIGHT NOW. :-) Maybe the community is
suddenly chomping at the bit to help with this stuff. But they certainly werent
10 years ago...
One may never know what the outcome *could be if the suggested implementation
is not attempted. I dont really consider looking for board members through
personal means, mailing lists or the like very effective. Front page posts on
Haikus website (and Haiku Inc.s) that the organization is looking for directors
(of which I have never seen in 10 years) would probably attract more attention.
Of course, the organization isnt willing to turn over to this model with more
democratic elections and a membership system with voting rights.
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Hi Karl,
Your offers of help come across, sometimes, a little more negative than
helpful. I think that if you said "I have a bunch of ideas for bylaw changes
that I would like to propose", it would win more friends and support than "this
project is mismanaged and that's why it is doomed and going nowhere" (not a
direct quote). :-)
As for choosing board members, that is a very interesting topic to me.
See - I chose the original board. They were all developers. I figured that no
one at all has any kind of devotion or interest in the project that comes
anywhere near that of the developers. How many thousands of hours have axeld
and Ingo spent on Haiku? mmuman? Ithamar? No one has more vested interest in
Haiku than them. And no one has worked anywhere near as hard as they have.
That's why I chose the original board the way that I did. Actually, I didn't
have the resources to investigate whether non-US citizens could sit on a board,
so I picked all US developers, back then. But the board now is the people who
have put more blood sweat and tears into Haiku than anyone else.
Having said that and explained why I did what I did... At that time and now I
am not sure what the right thing to do as far as a board goes. Haiku, Inc.
could use some outside expertise in accounting (no slight intended Ryan), law,
fund raising, etc. IF I were axeld and I wanted to change the board, I would
think about people who have expertise in those areas. I don't think an ad on
the front page of the website would be likely to bring in those sorts of folks.
I would think about reaching out to SCORE, https://www.score.org/ , or maybe
even some of the big names in technology (JLG comes to mind) to see if they
would recommend someone.
I think that change for change's sake is a bad idea. But I think that finding
people who bring some skills that the technologists don't have would be very
helpful. I know that I would have loved to have people like that to help me
when I was running the show (so to speak - as Ryan points out - leading Haiku
is a lot more about grunt work than glory).
Michael
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