[OpenID] The Contradiction of the Community Board

[Martin Atkins]

Hi folks,

David's blog post last night[1] got me thinking about the structure of 
the OIDF board and the current revenue model.

Presently the primary source of income for the foundation is the fees 
paid by corporate board members for their board seats. (That much is 
indicated by the fact that we call them "sustaining members".)

Due to some community concern about the corporates "taking over", the 
Foundation introduced a rule that there would always be at least one 
more community board seat than corporate, which gives an aligned 
community board an effective veto for anything the corporate board 
members might propose.

Now, I don't want to imply that all of the corporate board members are 
there to further an agenda or to "take over" -- I'm well aware that in 
many cases they are there primarily to support the Foundation -- but for 
the sake of this hypothetical let's assume that all corporate board 
members join in order to assert some sort of control over OpenID. Let's 
assume further that the value of being a corporate board member is 
diminished if they are unable to get the Foundation to do whatever it is 
that they want the Foundation to do.

This puts the community board in an interesting position: if the 
corporate board members propose something that the community board 
wishes to veto because they perceive it as harmful to the community, the 
community board risks alienating the corporate board members and 
potentially losing a chunk of money for the Foundation.

So the question is should the community board vote for the good of the 
Foundation or the good of the community? In an ideal world it'd be both, 
but if forced to choose it seems that the community board in fact has a 
legal responsibility to favor the Foundation over the community.

I think what this means in practice is that it's very important that the 
Foundation find some additional revenue sources that are not dependent 
on the satisfaction of board members. DeWitt and David have a proposal 
based on contributions and sponsorships, as David summarizes in his 
post. I don't claim to have any other specific ideas right now.

Although in practice I don't believe the corporate board is trying to 
"take over" right now, it doesn't really sit right with me that this 
conflict exists even in the hypothetical. Finding additional revenue 
sources ought to be quite high up the Foundation's to-do list for the 
near future in order to reduce this conflict. It'd would also be good to 
figure out a way for smaller companies to participate on the same level 
as the large companies represented now.

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts other people have on this subject.

Cheers,
Martin

[1] http://daveman692.livejournal.com/343116.html