[OpenID board] Getting Membership Management Under Control

DeWitt Clinton dewitt at google.com
Wed Jun 3 17:07:38 UTC 2009


Well, there's a lot of history there.  I was directly involved in bringing
Google to the OIDF, and I felt strongly about the importance of OpenID to
the web, so at the time I was a natural fit to represent Google on the
board.  But it was outside my day to day responsibilities at Google -- I did
it more as an individual that happened to be filling a corporate seat
sponsored by Google.

Eric, on the other hand, was thinking about and working on these types of
things full time for his job at Google, and he was making quite an
impression on the community in the process, so he not surprisingly was
elected to hold a community seat when we held the elections.   After a
certain point it was clear to everyone that since Eric was doing this as
part of his real job at Google, and I wasn't, the most natural thing to do
was hand the Google seat to him.

I might even have run for a community seat myself, but I've been focusing my
spare-time energy elsewhere of late (like the Open Web Foundation), and
didn't want to run for a seat if I didn't think I could contribute enough.

If people feel strongly about this, change the bylaws to say that a
community seat can't be filled by an employee of a company already on the
board.  Though this has risks, too -- it would be a shame to lose good
people simply because of the signature on their paycheck.  Probably better
to simply elect community representatives that we feel are acting in the
interest of the community first, and not worry so much about their employer
(which as we've seen with several representatives already, is a temporary
state anyway).

-DeWitt

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 9:27 AM, Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.) <
eddy_nigg at startcom.org> wrote:

>  On 06/03/2009 07:22 PM, Carsten Pötter:
>
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:41 PM, Luke Shepard <lshepard at facebook.com> <lshepard at facebook.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>  Also, with the exception of Allen Tom (who has long been a community
> advocate since before Yahoo became a provider), none of the community
> members are currently also corporate members.
>
>
>
>  I guess that's not really addressing the problem Eddy mentioned. Take
> Google for example: DeWitt Clinton was representing Google as a
> corporate board member while Eric Sachs was elected as a community
> member of the board. Recently DeWitt resigned and Eric took his place.
>
>
>
>
>
> So my impression wasn't all that wrong. Thanks for clarifying that!
>
>
>   Regards      Signer:  Eddy Nigg, StartCom Ltd. <http://www.startcom.org>
> Jabber:  startcom at startcom.org  Blog:  Join the Revolution!<http://blog.startcom.org>
> Phone:  +1.213.341.0390
>
>
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>
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