Re: [RFC] Allow fd.o to join forces with X.Org

[Daniel Stone <daniel@fooishbar.org>]

Hi,

On Fri, 26 Oct 2018 at 11:57, Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 10:13:51AM +1000, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 02:37:25PM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > > On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 2:05 PM Daniel Stone <daniel@fooishbar.org> wrote:
> > > > Yeah, I think it makes sense. Some things we do:
> > > >   - provide hosted network services for collaborative development,
> > > > testing, and discussion, of open-source projects
> > > >   - administer, improve, and extend this suite of services as necessary
> > > >   - assist open-source projects in their use of these services
> > > >   - purchase, lease, or subscribe to, computing and networking
> > > > infrastructure allowing these services to be run
> > >
> > > I fully agree that we should document all this. I don't think the
> > > bylaws are the right place though, much better to put that into
> > > policies that the board approves and which can be adapted as needed.
> > > Imo bylaws should cover the high-level mission and procedural details,
> > > as our "constitution", with the really high acceptance criteria of
> > > 2/3rd of all members approving any changes. Some of the early
> > > discussions tried to spell out a lot of the fd.o policies in bylaw
> > > changes, but then we realized it's all there already. All the details
> > > are much better served in policies enacted by the board, like we do
> > > with everything else.
> > >
> > > As an example, let's look at XDC. Definitely one of the biggest things
> > > the foundation does, with handling finances, travel sponsoring grants,
> > > papers committee, and acquiring lots of sponsors. None of this is
> > > spelled out in the bylaws, it's all in policies that the board
> > > deliberates and approves. I think this same approach will also work
> > > well for fd.o.
> > >
> > > And if members are unhappy with what the board does, they can fix in
> > > the next election by throwing out the unwanted directors.
> >
> > yeah, fair call. though IMO in that case we can just reduce to
> >
> >    \item Support free and open source projects through the freedesktop.org
> >    infrastructure.
> >
> > because my gripe is less with the fdo bit but more with defining what
> > "project hosting" means, given that we use that term to exclude fdo projects
> > from getting anything else. I think just dropping that bit is sufficient.
>
> Hm yeah, through the lens of "everything not explicitly listed isn't in
> scope as X.org's purpose", leaving this out is probably clearest. And
> under 2.4 (i) the board already has the duty to interpret what exactly
> this means wrt membership eligibility.
>
> Harry, Daniel, what do you think?

Yeah, that's fine. I didn't specifically want the enumerated list of
what we do in the bylaws, just spelling it out for background as a
handy reference I could point to later. I think maybe we could reduce
it to something like:
  Administer, support, and improve the freedesktop.org hosting
infrastructure to support the projects it hosts

Gives us enough scope to grow in the future (e.g. we don't need a
bylaws change to move from pure-git to GitLab), avoids the sticky
question of what exactly fd.o hosts in the bylaws (e.g. if
NetworkManager needs a new repo then we don't have to consult
membership to add it), but is still pretty firmly limited in scope.

Any of the above have my in-principle ack though, I think they're all
reasonable colours for our lovely shed.

Cheers,
Daniel
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