[OpenID] Board membership limited?

[Peter Williams]

Foundation membership is not the same as Board seat.
 
Some folk (folks who presumably paying members) decided on the current Board power structure, with some kind of ratification process. We already see a clearly architected division : corporate vs community. If you believe the tone, the corporate side is motivated by mutual covenants to address patent paranoia. We will see. 
 
It will be fun to see (a) how much of the architecture and policy work is disclosed (i.e. who decided all that Board structure, the NDA rules, and REALLY why?) (b) which of the corporate function and conversations are disclosed to members, such as the details of the individual corporate "contributions" (c) what if any of this is disclosed to the wider openid community contributing IP (or not) who are not paidup Foundation members.
 
Probably fair to say that the right to know what going on requires at least paying the Foundation member dues, to at least peon grade. Knowing such Foundations and their political processes, I would not expect too much information flow to the peon rank.But, every formal organization needs cash flow!
 
Governance is always a pain, in grassroots-based initiatives. But, at least folks are trying ...and thus _learning_ to govern what will hopefully continue to be rancorous trade association.
 
OpenID cannot do any worse that the SSL community's CA/PKI governance (sheer, unadulerated, corporate bias) - the yardstick stick Im going to use when measuring the OpenID Foundations progress cover the next year. Necessarily, I will do this as a NON Foundation member. I will however see if I can pursuade the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to maintain a paid-up liason-promoting membership, tho - on behalf of all the many folks who make up the realty universe. 

________________________________

From: general-bounces at openid.net on behalf of Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.)
Sent: Fri 2/8/2008 8:08 PMg
To: Dick Hardt
Cc: general at openid.net
Subject: Re: [OpenID] Board membership limited?


Hi Dick,

Dick Hardt wrote: 

	Hi Eddy 

	Both statements are accurate.

	Anyone is welcome to run for the community board seats when they come up for re-election. 

	The community board members want to ensure that the Foundation represents the community, so would like to limit the Corporate board membership, or at least ensure that community board seats balance the corporate board seats -- so adding additional corporate board members is not out of the question, it would require careful consideration by the board.

Is there some documentation on this or is it just an unspoken rule? What about balancing the corporate members a little bit with smaller organizations and individuals? I'd view this to be at least an interesting thought, to balance the steering role even further and guaranty a wider representation. Also most community board members are affiliated with various interested parties too, so this perhaps this isn't the most balanced setup anyway? Just some food for thoughts from me...



	-- Dick

	On 8-Feb-08, at 6:07 PM, Eddy Nigg (StartCom Ltd.) wrote:


		Reading yet another nice article at http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3726771/OpenID+Gets+Star+Power.htm I picked up the following:
		
		"Washburn said that although the foundation will continue recruiting companies of all sizes to support the OpenID standard, it is not likely to add any more board members."
		
		Why is that? Just a week ago I was visiting the page at http://openid.net/foundation/join/ which invites to join the foundation, from student up to the kind of cooperations which just joined? A week ago there was a big emptiness at the "Corporate Board Members" section...
		
		Can somebody clarify what the official position is?
		
		
		-- 
		
Regards 	
 	
Signer: 	 Eddy Nigg, StartCom Ltd. <http://www.startcom.org/> 	
Jabber: 	 startcom at startcom.org	
Blog: 	 Join the Revolution! <http://blog.startcom.org/> 	
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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