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Corporate Governance and the occasional humorous tidbit from the boardroom
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Thu, 22 Nov 2007
Many ways to contribute
The GNOME Foundation is presently going through it’s annual election cycle. I want to note my appreciation of the time and energy of all those who are running.
I’ve got something over 21 years cumulative experience as a Director, most of it in the not-for-profit organization space. Large NGOs are generally very professionally run, but one of the things I’ve observed quite often about the tiny associations that typically arise around local events and civic initiatives: there is a tendency for the Membership to expect the Board to do all the work.
This is likewise true of groups in the Open Source space. Such organizations usually don’t have full staff and the Board, which should be concerning itself with a governance role, ends up being called upon to act additionally as both Executive and Secretariat. Everyone else in the community contentedly sits back, expecting herculean efforts from the poor suckers who got elected. Every half baked idea has to be followed up and every last initiative to be successfully carried out. The inevitable result is burn-out of the very people who are your most passionate advocates.
Wide open spaces
Predictably, people have been attempting to force the various candidates into making solemn promises about all the many things they are going to do for GNOME in the coming year. Which is all a bit ridiculous: Hello! These people are unpaid volunteers!
Nevertheless, being candidates, most are replying with various exciting statements as to what they are going to achieve if elected Directors. Replying to one such platform, David Neary writes:
What has prevented you from doing/encouraging these things as an ordinary member? The marketing team is open to all, several members propose/organise local events… What makes you think you will be more able to do these things as a board member?
It’s a fine question; and as is the case with most of the organizations that exist only to provide a legal structure around a Free Software community (eg GNOME, The Perl Foundation, Linux Australia, etc), ultimately the organization and its Board matters little because it is those who write the code, package the software, do the promotional work, complete translations, who set the direction. And that’s not to mention the courage of the individual who convinces his or her peers and superiors that a particular piece of software should be used in their organization.
Promoting enthusiasm
I should make it clear that I do value the work of the Directors of these various umbrella organizations. I’ve been in their shoes. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it enjoyable work, but it can be rewarding. None the less, it takes a huge amount of effort to prepare financial statements and to maintain relationships with sponsors. Even just context switching in order to attend a conference call is a burden. It’s thankless toil that even in titularly transparent organizations largely goes on behind the scenes.
In early 2003, Linux Australia expressed that it’s purpose was to “facilitate the enthusiasm” of people in the Open Source community. Really, that’s what all such supporting organizations are about. The hard work of all the volunteers, be they at Board level, those carrying out marketing campaigns, the miracle workers making awesome posters and promotional material, the fun people manning booths at trade shows, and the tireless volunteers helping out at our premier conferences and events, are what make being a part of the Linux movement the amazing experience that it is.
AfC
Thu, 04 Aug 2005
Linux® Trademark in Australia
One of the organizations whose board I sit on, Linux Australia, has been working on securing the Linux trademark in Australia. We’ve actually been working on this for a very long time. It’s a long story that goes something like this:
In some countries, the term “Linux” is a registered trademark owned by Linus Torvalds [if you want the gory details about how that came to be, see pages 133-135 of Just for Fun. Yes, you should click that, buy the book, and make me rich].
As it happens, some people (including, Linus, as astounding a co-incidence it may appear) seem to think that Linus has better things to do than worry about administering the ownership of the Linux trademark. Since he didn’t really want to worry about it, he assigned responsibility for administering the trademark he found himself owning to an organization setup expressly for the purpose called Linux Mark Institute.
Sometime in 2003, someone brought it to our attention that the Linux trademark wasn’t registered in Australia and that we should be doing something about this intolerable situation! (Yes, you should feel some ironic sarcasm there, as I reflect on all the people who think our little band of unpaid volunteers [1] should be doing something about whatever their intolerable situation happens to be).
So, we set about finding out what had to be done to get it registered in Australia for the further benefit of the global Linux and Open Source community that we serve. That took longer than we expected - it turns out that trademark law and dealing with IP Australia is rather more complicated than perhaps it might be in that ideal world we all like to pretend we live in. After a few bats at the piñata (not to mention considerable elapsed time), we finally clued in and retained legal counsel (ie, hired a lawyer) to pursue the matter for us.
The counsel that Linux Australia instructed, a jovial fellow (who also is a right proper geek) named Jeremy Malcolm, has been toiling away at this for some time now. He recently resolved some outstanding confusion (mostly just crossed wires between all the unpaid volunteers involved on various sides of whichever your favourite ocean is), and is putting together the final pieces of the puzzle that will resolve the issue properly. Part of that was a sending a letter to various people around the country who might happen to be using Linux professionally, asking them to indicate their knowledge of the international trademark and their support of it.
As is quite usual in our community of mostly unpaid volunteers, a few people overreacted and thought that they might have an intolerable situation on their hands! (Yes, it might have helped if Jeremy had been a little more specific that he was acting on our behalf, but then again…)
Alas, no, it’s nothing worth getting excited about. You see, we’ve proceeded with the trademark application already. So long ago that it ought to be decided soon, and when it is it will be assigned to the person who should (and in my IANAL opinion defacto does) own it, Linus Torvalds. Then LMI can take over, and the situation that should have existed all along will, and thus the destructive conflict will be at an end and order will be brought to the galaxy.
Since people were bugging him about it, Jeremy just wrote up a FAQ page, to which I happily point anyone who a) is still reading, and b) still thinks that there is an intolerable situation to be had.
Incidentally, the title of this post is the first, and expect last, time I will ever bother putting that stupid ® mark beside the word Linux :)
AfC
[1] There are many levels of meaning when you consider that the link unpaid volunteers doesn’t go anywhere. It’s intended for many different audiences. You know who you are. I think I should trademark null://, though.
Sun, 19 Jun 2005
Heard in the Boardroom
Some quotes from this weekend’s meeting of the Linux Australia Managing Committee:
Leading into a discussion about a future budget for the organization, several members did a somewhat informal, back of the envelope calculation to get a starting point (as this year’s financials are, naturally, not available yet). After adding up some numbers, this was heard:
Geoffrey: “so we almost certainly lost money this year”
AJ rebuts: “no, I feel we almost certainly made money this year”
Mark, the treasurer interjected: “no, we basically came out even.”
Jon concluded: “so, what we made was $20K, plus or minus $30K. Great!”
Thank god for error bars.
AJ: So we’re controlling them
Stewart: No, we’re facilitating their enthusiasms!
AJ: Ok, we’re controlling them in the sense of facilitating them.
Mark: Your husband is a good example.
Pia: No he’s not.
AJ: I’d rather have invalid data than no data.
Ah, nothing like sentences taken out of context -ed
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