XSF Discussion - 2011-06-22

I am trying like heck to get free of this debug session at work, but it's a problem that has now gone into it's second day so i'm not being hopeful it will clear up in 20 minutes

i'll be lurking but probably not active

T-15

hi Florian!

yhello :)

was that a typo?

eh ... nope

ok

just checking

y'hello maybe :)

some people say "hello" more like "yhello" :)

:)

gotta love package tracking :)

doesn't make it go faster ... but still cool to see where the stuff is :)

agreed

do we have a typewith.me running somewhere?

or should I quickly create one?

good idea

http://typewith.me/xsf

heh, can you create permanent instances there?

looks like it

hmm, don't see Will online

first question: does the Board have a quorum or is this just another friendly chat (as we had in the Council non-meeting earlier)?

bear is here

can't see jack nor Will nor nyco

I think he said a few minutes ago he wasn't really.

I have not seen Nÿco in a long time

and one of our Council members missed three XSF votes so maybe isn't an XSF member anymore

heh

I guess for a decision like that, we'd need a quorate board :p

um, yeah ;-)

Oh, I thought it just happened automagically.

(Section 2.6 of the bylaws)

Kev: I thought you were talking about transitioning the XSF to the IETF

Oh, right.

:)

but yeah, for the 3 consecutive misses, Kev's right

I think a members vote would probably be more appropraite than Board for that :)

well:

Section 2.6 Automatic Termination. Members may have their membership status automatically terminated and their names removed by the Secretary of the Corporation from all membership records of the Corporation if they fail to participate in three (3) consecutive meetings of the Members of the Corporation, held electronically or otherwise.

that doesn't say "will" or "must", it says "may"

Right, but 2.5 says may as well.

I'm not defending the person who hasn't voted, just noting that I think the people who wrote the bylaws built in some wiggle room (although I'm not sure that's a good idea)

And I don't think that we're saying that membership can vote to remove a member, but the member chose not to be removed :)

heh true

If it's intended that there's wiggle-room, I think we should change the bylaws to be explicit about who gets to do the wiggling.

I note that when Bear failed to vote for three in a row, he was removed - was there a Board discussion about that?

not afaik

We should probably do whatever's consistent, and then make sure Bylaws are made to match.

I think the bylaws should say "will be removed"

yeah

that way, there's no question about special treatment

well, that was one point I wanted talk about today

requesting a change of the bylaws following the voting discussion on members

and even decrease that number to 2

I went through the votes because of that discussion, and found that a number of people would have been removed on the basis of 2, including two of Council and one of Board.

(Not that this is strictly a problem for Board, who don't need to be members)

*isn't ?

Dave Cridland (IIRC) proposed that Council members would not need to be XSF members

Given the current seeming apathy from Council and Board (neither of which had quorum today), maybe that's appropriate.

stpeter: Yes, but didn't get much support for that, IIRC.

I think it has a benefit of having them being members too

Kev: cue apathetic music here

please don't construe my lack of activity as apathy

and I'm actually more leaning towards requiring both to be members (Council + Board)

bear: we understand that everyone is über-busy

bear: You are at least here and said you'd be busy for this case. This isn't true of everyone, either on Council or Board for today.

didn't realize I could send an empty message

sorry - that came off as really cranky (which is a side effect of my current work related grief)

apologies

bear: no apology required!

and I'm +1 to board/council being members

should we add that to the todo for the next meeting too?

:)

Florian: You mean the next Members meeting?

the kick I got out of xsf by missing 3 meetings was what was needed - I would say we could drop it to 2 missed in a row

Board needs to propose it first

I do wonder about how to proceed -- e.g., we could shut down the XSF as a legal entity or modify the bylaws such that we basically turn it into an open-source (open-spec) project .... the legal superstructure is not truly necessary to do our core work

all this voting stuff is just overhead

being a legal entity allows for what benefits?

sponsorship?

IANAL, but we do have 501(c)(3) status

naturally, with that status comes responsibilities

and we need to have membership, a board, etc.

I think there's a benefit of having the structure

I'm just thinking out loud at this time

Florian: there are benefits and costs, yes

it /should/ make people care about it :)

I think part of the issue is, except for the council, the membership doesn't really have to do anything

bear: indeed

true

Except vote.

we tried a bit with the various teams, but that's just more structure to a large extent

Although the iteam works moderately well.

if we were a business, we'd be due for a reorg :)

Kev: it does, yes

:)

although in fact the iteam isn't even all XSF members

e.g., Jerry

just folks who come together because they care about keeping things running

I think a first step would be to start restricting membership to people who are active

bear: thanks for participating in this conversation despite your work hell

i.e. decreasing the misses to 2 and enforcing the 3 misses we have atm

Florian: so we'd have, what, 10 members? ;-)

Well, is that a bad thing?

no!

not at all

And we have more than 10 active people, I think.

I don't think it is :)

Kev: indeed

but then we'd basically get rid of voting for the Council and the Board

all members vote on everything

if you have a quorum, decisions can be made

it may be that having a council and board are what is causing folks to not interact

bear: yes, maybe!

tho the board is required I think for legal reasons

hmm

"oh we'll leave it up to the 'leadership'"

it would be an interesting thing to try for the next "season"

bear: yes it is

I would vaguely resist disbanding Council.

By which I mean I think it'd be a terrible idea :)

I think we need to get rid of the Executive Director position ;-)

There are enough people involved that ever spec would be vetod for one reason or another.

*every

yes, that is a concern I would have - seeing how the jingle codec discussion has happened

or people voting just yes because they just vote

without ever reading the specs

Florian: That's not actually so bad.

maybe the first step is to tighten the membership voting requirement

Since Council votes are vetos.

and see how much of a shake out that has

It's only the 'No's that matter.

but if there is no Council then there are no vetoes

right

it would be true rough consensus :)

not unanimity

Consensus meaning unanimity, of course :)

the ietf can teach us something in that area

heck, maybe we can even work some running code into the mix ;-)

bear: The IETF has a Council equivalent.

Kev: true

I think a first step would be to enforce the bylaws and possibly reducing that limit

as I'm well aware :)

and then see how membership reacts

and then go from there

yes, but I thought consensus was not the same as majority vote

bear: it's not

Florian: Yes.

bear: It's not, consensus means everyone is in agreement :)

"Rough consensus" is something of a misnomer.

I always disliked that word: agreement

Kev: sometimes consensus is rough, sometimes it is smooth

and then their is the W3C

in the IETF, consensus does *not* mean that everyone is in agreement

hehe

bear: I'd prefer to go in the direction of an open-spec project than in the direction of an industry consortium with corporate members (not individual contributors)

totally agree

one of the good things about the XSF is the lack of corporate dominance

one model might be the WHATWG (partial shudder)

bear: right, it's just us geeks (ideally)

granted, I get paid by a big company and they tell me what to think and do, but at least we have the appearance of independence ;-)

:)

lol

Kev: imagine that we had only ~12 active committers

which sounds about right

others could contribute patches

but only the committers could vote

that's your Council equivalent

your talking about something like the Apache model

something like it, yeah

although Apache members can't be removed

that could mean two types of membership

one of the challenges in any such model is determining who is a committer / decider

voting and non

e.g., IESG is selected via the NomCom in an arcane process that's necessary because the IETF doesn't have the concept of membership

stpeter: I'm not convinced we should go for huge overhauls right now. I think going with the simple one of changing bylaws to remove completely inactive people would be a start.

the current structure of the XSF was established 10 years ago and might not fit today's reality

and the bylaws were written by those evil jabber.com people

Or, well, we could look at the ways the XSF is currently failing, and see if bylaws changen could help.

Kev: +1

I'm not sure that fewer members automatically means better review of specs, for example.

I definitely agree on enforcing the bylaws

Kev: right

Fewer members *would* mean that people in positions of responsibility who were inactive would be removed and thus make space for potentially more active people.

yeah

This *might* address some issues.

so let's start enforcing that?

(It may well not)

I mean, bylaw 2.6 exists

personally I don't think there's anything bad about being active and then inactive -- people's priorities change, not everyone is wedded to XMPP for life like I am, etc. :)

stpeter: No, I don't think there's anything wrong with being inactive - only when it's blocking progress.

:)

Kev: correct

Kev: right

being inactive is ok, being non-communicative *and* inactive - that's the problem

The problem with inactivity is when you end up with people who are completely uninterested because they've been inactive voting on things, etc.

right

given that you have 2+ weeks to vote, there's really no excuse for missing more than 1 meeting in a row

I know I've missed one meeting in my time :)

I need to switch back to work - i'm +1 to the tone of the conversation so far and +1 to tightening up member voting bylaw items

in fact I might have missed two

bear: thanks for participating

bear: thanks for your time :)

so who needs to enforce Section 2.6?

is it Baord? Secretary? Members?

Florian: the Secretary

right

well, the Secretary just automatically removes members who haven't voted

bear: I've just assumed you've pulled out of that.

And have been acting autonomously.

I used to do that, now Alex does

however

in this case I will send a message to the members@ list

with my executive director hat on

Have you checked that the person *has* missed three votes? :)

I shall certainly double-check first

I was told they have, but haven't checked (I only checked two votes backwards, I think)

it might be good to also send a list of people who have been removed to the members@ list and the member removed

indeed

i.e. so that we don't have the situation like with bear who found out months later that he wasn't a member

I think that sounds like a good thing to do :)

Florian: good point

This is clearly not good :)

Kev: why not?

It is clearly not good that members are removed without realising.

ah right :)

yea

on a different note: Board meeting next wednesday then?

aren't they supposed to be every two weeks?

well, we didn't have a full one this week?

well true

I'm sure that if we send a few interesting email messages, there will be plenty of demand for a meeting :)

:)

it's difficult to maintain energy and commitment for an initiative like XMPP over a span of years

yeah

and the technology is getting to be a bit mature, which means that excitement is elsewhere (social networking, websockets, etc.)

but I think there's good times too :)

like the Summits

so in part I think we need to adjust to a new reality

I'm still excited!

I am too!

but fewer people are still excited

+1

which is fine, really

but we need to think about how to structure things now

so this has been a good conversation

but we don't have answers yet

among other things, I'm going to make a list of people who really are active (not necessarily in writing specs, could be iteam or website or other efforts) -- I doubt that list has more than 20 people on it

but we've got a start

You mean active on more than standards@?

Because contributing to standards@ is valuable too.

(Although of course doesn't require membership, much like the IETF)

Kev: not sure, I might make a few lists

:)

and there are people who are active in one area (e.g., jingle, bosh) but not others

I know a lot of people *care*, but that's not the same as doing things

'Tis true.

another way to motivate people a bit is money :)

always

Florian: Not necessarily.

but sometimes you motivate the wrong people that way

true :/

and you de-motivate people who don't get any money

or you can

that's a difficult path, but not impossible

well this has been useful, but I'm going to heat up some lunch now

Enjoy.

bon appetit :)

thanks, guys

I'm not disappearing, just going AFK for a few minutes

great - it just keeps coming today - one of leo's servers evidently got an injection attack earlier today

I know what i'm doing tonight :/

ouch :/

bear: if there's anything I can help with, drop me a line

thanks

right now i'm just doing an audit for entry points and making sure everything is up to date

sigh

sorry to hear it, bear

the 'net is an ugly place sometimes

sadly, even tho I'm the only person maintaining it, I have found a couple places out of sync

yea, php and mysql are evil

nod

unfortunately, they are also quite convenient ;-)

yea

(and maybe to atlas, too, but one experiment at a time...)