[foundation-board] URGENT: Problems with a specific individual and OKF projects

[James Casbon]

Rufus,

This seems like a real pain.

One the one hand, I don't see a problem in moderating posts to an open
list but, as Ian points out, in this case we need to be careful to
avoid the implication that we are being secretive. If possible, we
should address and defeat her points in public, but as you point out,
that is a time sink.  It would seem that we cannot preserve both full
access to the discussion and fully address all points raised on lists.

Nevertheless, the real damage here is the off list allegations and
there it doesn't seem to be much we can do unless the people she is
mailing come to us.  Perhaps making sure all the minutes, accounts,
etc are public is the best we can do to counter her accusations.

Slightly off-topic, this reminds me of a few points that Ben made
about ASFs experience with this setup.  Firstly, the core principle is
that membership is a meritocracy.  You only get to be a full member by
first being a committer.  While this code orientated approach does not
map directly to OKF, I does provide way of filtering people who just
turn up demanding to be taken seriously as members (which is a problem
we seem to be facing now).  Secondly, they made the decision that they
would not take any project funding to prevent the kind allegations
that Paola is making.  The major problem with this approach was
deciding what projects would become ASF projects, since one approach
was to setup a fake project to get the cloak of open source from ASF.
Of course, not taking money meant they were scrabbling about for
donations to keep servers going - not an approach that the OKF would
want to take if it is providing services.

Jo, you state that the 'cause of Paola's ongoing dissatisfaction' is
the lack of transparency.  This seems a weak characterization of the
her accusation of fraud.  It's one thing to say a process imperfect,
but yer another to claim that it is imperfect by design and in order
to hide things.  Do you think, as her friend, you could ask her to
tell you the fraud she thinks has taken place?  At least then we can
actually deal with the claim.

James