Why was "The Outreach Program for Women" allowed to so significantly impact Gnome's primary mission?
One of the Gnome Foundations primary missions is "Fund Receipt and Disbursement": "The foundation will be in charge of disbursing these funds to the benefit of GNOME and, to the extent possible, in accordance with the wishes of the benefactor" (https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/Charter).
The funding of the OPW sounds like it's completely appropriate here. Several benefactors and organizations have wanted to fund this activity, and the Gnome Foundation provides the means for them to do so.
Why is the Gnome Foundation is funding and administering this program to begin with?
It is a multi-organizational program, between several different projects. It looks like rather than setting up a whole new organization just for this one program, they decided to have one group do the organization and running of the program, while the other groups contribute money to that one. It can be expensive and inefficient to set up too many new organizations; there is a lot of overhead to a new organization.
It looks like the problem is that because the OPW funds internships, the Gnome Foundation winds up having to pay them at a steady rate, while it may get payments from the other organizations in lump sums. It sounds like the Gnome Foundation has not been keeping up with invoicing the other organizations, so while they'll be in the black once everyone settles up, right now they've run short of cash on hand due to all of the outstanding balances.
it absolutely should not financially impact Gnome's ability to ship Gnome.
Is shipping Gnome the job of the Gnome foundation? As far as I can tell, the foundation is there to organize conferences, run the server infrastructure, and run programs like the OPW. Actual development is mostly done by member companies, like Red Had and SUSE.
Given that the outreach program was started in response to the lack of women candidates for Google's Summer of Code, this program could (and given fiduciary responsibilities, should) have focused solely on non-exclusionary outreach to women Summer of Code candidates.
That's not necessarily the best way to address the problem. It may be that certain aspects of how Google's Summer of Code works inherently biased towards men; or at least, people who are already fairly comfortable in the community and with open source software, which given the current substantial gender imbalance in the community, can mean that it's not really a suitable way to encourage more women to get involved.
Running the internships separately from the Google Summer of Code is perfectly fine; they just need to do a better job of managing the finances.
One of the Gnome Foundations primary missions is "Fund Receipt and Disbursement": "The foundation will be in charge of disbursing these funds to the benefit of GNOME and, to the extent possible, in accordance with the wishes of the benefactor"
This provides its own rebuttal. Running out of funds necessary to pay for core commitments is not "to the benefit of GNOME", and certainly not in-line with their charter.
To quote the same charter -- specifically the mission statement:
The GNOME Foundation will work to further the goal of the
GNOME project: ___to create a computing platform for use by the general
public that is completely free software.___ (emphasis mine)
To achieve this goal, the Foundation will coordinate releases of GNOME
and determine which projects are part of GNOME. The Foundation will act
as an official voice for the GNOME project, providing a means of
communication with the press and with commercial and noncommercial
organizations interested in GNOME software. The foundation may produce
educational materials and documentation to help the public learn about
GNOME software. In addition, it may sponsor GNOME-related technical
conferences, and represent GNOME at relevant conferences sponsored by
others, help create technical standards for the project and promote
the use and development of GNOME software.
Gender-exclusionary social programs only very loosely fall under this mission statement, and only given an exceedingly broad interpretation of the mission.
[edit]
I think this admission provides sufficient evidence of charter overreach:
The changes were not tracked effectively from the
point when other organizations joined the OPW. This
impacted not only our ability to manage the OPW
administration, but also to keep up with the core
financial tasks of the Foundation -- tasks which
already needed the full attention of the
Foundation's employees and the board.
This appears to be no small matter of malfeasance by virtue of clear overreach beyond their charter. I can't help but wonder if there has been some form of social cause "regulatory capture" within the foundation that drove this surprising decision.
A recall referendum, as defined by the charter, seems warranted.
This provides its own rebuttal. Running out of funds
necessary to pay for core commitments is not "to the
benefit of GNOME", and certainly not in-line with their
charter.
Of course running out of funds is not to the benefit of GNOME. The running out of funds part was an accident; no one wanted to do that. If there were any other program that had similar characteristics; something where the foundation were paying out a lot of money with the expectation of being reimbursed, but were not reimbursed as fast as they had expected, it would have had the same effect.
I think you need to separate your distaste for the program in the first place, from the immediate problem that they ran into a cashflow problem running it.
to create a computing platform for use by the general
public that is completely free software...
promote the use and development of GNOME software.
An internship program tailored towards a demographic that is traditionally heavily under-represented in both the users and developers of the free software eco-system sounds like exactly what the Gnome Foundation should be doing. Note the "general public" part; in order to reach the general public, and not just a fairly small niche market of existing free software enthusiasts, they need to broaden their appeal to demographics which don't traditionally use or work on the project.
Remember, this money is being used directly for the development of Gnome; these internships are for development of Gnome and other components of the free software stack, like the Linux Kernel, Firefox, and so on.
This appears to be no small matter of malfeasance by
virtue of clear overreach beyond their charter.
Whoa, whoa. That's a rather strong accusation; you are accusing them of willfully harming the foundation against its charter?
The foundation has been running this program for several years, and the membership has never objected to it. It's pretty clear that the membership does not believe this program to be at odds with the mission of the foundation.
Now, obviously the financial mismanagement part is a problem, which the board of directors should be working on fixing. But that doesn't mean that you need to throw the whole program out, just be more careful about working on cashflow.
Is there a mechanism by which the board can be recalled?
It does not seem at all unwarranted.
Are you a member of the Gnome Foundation? If not, why do you care so much about how it operates, and sets its priorities; or if you care so much, why don't you become a member and get involved?
Doesn't teacup50 have a fair point? I would say that at least Mediawiki, Openstack, and some robotics foundation (all participating in OPW by taking interns) are well out of scope. All GNOME gains from being in charge of it all is a chance to make mistakes.
Whoa, whoa. That's a rather strong accusation; you are accusing them of willfully harming the foundation against its charter?
If I understand what happened here correctly, yes. The OPW program was questionable within the charter, but this went beyond administering OPW for Gnome itself.
The board seemingly elected to administer the program for external organizations, to the direct detriment of their ability to manage the Gnome Foundation's responsibilities.
This outcome was obviously unintentional, but the choices that led to it were not.
Comments
One of the Gnome Foundations primary missions is "Fund Receipt and Disbursement": "The foundation will be in charge of disbursing these funds to the benefit of GNOME and, to the extent possible, in accordance with the wishes of the benefactor" (https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Resources/Charter).
The funding of the OPW sounds like it's completely appropriate here. Several benefactors and organizations have wanted to fund this activity, and the Gnome Foundation provides the means for them to do so.
It is a multi-organizational program, between several different projects. It looks like rather than setting up a whole new organization just for this one program, they decided to have one group do the organization and running of the program, while the other groups contribute money to that one. It can be expensive and inefficient to set up too many new organizations; there is a lot of overhead to a new organization.
It looks like the problem is that because the OPW funds internships, the Gnome Foundation winds up having to pay them at a steady rate, while it may get payments from the other organizations in lump sums. It sounds like the Gnome Foundation has not been keeping up with invoicing the other organizations, so while they'll be in the black once everyone settles up, right now they've run short of cash on hand due to all of the outstanding balances.
Is shipping Gnome the job of the Gnome foundation? As far as I can tell, the foundation is there to organize conferences, run the server infrastructure, and run programs like the OPW. Actual development is mostly done by member companies, like Red Had and SUSE.
That's not necessarily the best way to address the problem. It may be that certain aspects of how Google's Summer of Code works inherently biased towards men; or at least, people who are already fairly comfortable in the community and with open source software, which given the current substantial gender imbalance in the community, can mean that it's not really a suitable way to encourage more women to get involved.
Running the internships separately from the Google Summer of Code is perfectly fine; they just need to do a better job of managing the finances.
This provides its own rebuttal. Running out of funds necessary to pay for core commitments is not "to the benefit of GNOME", and certainly not in-line with their charter.
To quote the same charter -- specifically the mission statement:
Gender-exclusionary social programs only very loosely fall under this mission statement, and only given an exceedingly broad interpretation of the mission.[edit]
I think this admission provides sufficient evidence of charter overreach:
This appears to be no small matter of malfeasance by virtue of clear overreach beyond their charter. I can't help but wonder if there has been some form of social cause "regulatory capture" within the foundation that drove this surprising decision.A recall referendum, as defined by the charter, seems warranted.
I think you need to separate your distaste for the program in the first place, from the immediate problem that they ran into a cashflow problem running it.
An internship program tailored towards a demographic that is traditionally heavily under-represented in both the users and developers of the free software eco-system sounds like exactly what the Gnome Foundation should be doing. Note the "general public" part; in order to reach the general public, and not just a fairly small niche market of existing free software enthusiasts, they need to broaden their appeal to demographics which don't traditionally use or work on the project.Remember, this money is being used directly for the development of Gnome; these internships are for development of Gnome and other components of the free software stack, like the Linux Kernel, Firefox, and so on.
Whoa, whoa. That's a rather strong accusation; you are accusing them of willfully harming the foundation against its charter?The foundation has been running this program for several years, and the membership has never objected to it. It's pretty clear that the membership does not believe this program to be at odds with the mission of the foundation.
Now, obviously the financial mismanagement part is a problem, which the board of directors should be working on fixing. But that doesn't mean that you need to throw the whole program out, just be more careful about working on cashflow.
Are you a member of the Gnome Foundation? If not, why do you care so much about how it operates, and sets its priorities; or if you care so much, why don't you become a member and get involved?Doesn't teacup50 have a fair point? I would say that at least Mediawiki, Openstack, and some robotics foundation (all participating in OPW by taking interns) are well out of scope. All GNOME gains from being in charge of it all is a chance to make mistakes.
If I understand what happened here correctly, yes. The OPW program was questionable within the charter, but this went beyond administering OPW for Gnome itself.
The board seemingly elected to administer the program for external organizations, to the direct detriment of their ability to manage the Gnome Foundation's responsibilities.
This outcome was obviously unintentional, but the choices that led to it were not.
Wow, a wall of text. But all I can read is a seriously problematic and classic case of mansplaining.
Seriously, Hacker News can be so misogynistic at times it's not even funny.