[okfn-discuss] Governance and structure of the Open Knowledge Foundation and its activities

Wed Nov 25 14:23:49 UTC 2009

2009/11/24 Luis Villa <luis.villa at gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 8:13 AM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org> wrote:
[...]
>> What do people think? What is good/bad, in need of amendment or clarification?
>
> I guess I'd question the underlying assumption:
>
>> ## Background to this
>>
>> Discussion over the summer indicated that clearer structure and
>> governance is needed, see:
>>
>> <http://wiki.okfn.org/Vision/Structure>
>
> My recollection of the discussion was that clearer structure was
> definitely needed, but not necessarily governance. Governance of this
> sort can be helpful if there is a lack of decision-making capability,

What exactly would be the distinction between clearer structure and
clearer governance here? (I think you are right there is one but I'm a
bit hazy on what it would mean concretely ...)

> but as far as I can see the problem here is lack of bodies/resources,
> not lack of decision-making capability. In fact, heavyweight
> governance structures can be a significant drain on time/resources-

Quite agree. Aim here is not to wheel in some heavy decision-making
apparatus but have a clearer idea on whose involved and doing what. My
hope would be that e.g. meetings of Project Committee would be focused
on the "doing stuff" end of the spectrum e.g. what particular projects
are doing, helping to coordinate that, sorting out resources etc,
rather than dealing with too much heavy decision-making.

> GNOME has long had a problem where the best and brightest get sucked
> into doing board work and find they have much less time for the
> important work of actually building software.

We already have a separate board who should handle the dull stuff.
Network members and the Projects Committee are all about the "doing"
side of things (i.e. projects and working groups)

> This is not to absolutely rail against more governance, but just to
> make sure that you're separating the need for more clear structure
> (definitely necessary) from the need for more governance (not clearly
> necessary to me.)

Good to point this up you, and I quite agree we don't want to be
adding unnecessary admin overhead here.

Rufus