From ikluft at thunder.sbay.org Wed Jan 7 23:52:46 2009 From: ikluft at thunder.sbay.org (Ian Kluft) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 23:52:46 -0800 Subject: [RadioExam Dev] charter ready to send to the board? Message-ID: <20090108075246.GH23665@thunder.sbay.org> I'd like to discuss whether the RadioExam charter is ready to send to the Board of Directors for approval. If yes, please say so. If not, what changes does it need? http://wiki.sbay.org/twiki/bin/view/SIGs/RadioExamCharterDiscussion The board will probably discuss scheduling a meeting as soon as the election is done over the weekend. From star at starshine.org Thu Jan 8 15:07:12 2009 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 15:07:12 -0800 Subject: [RadioExam Dev] charter ready to send to the board? In-Reply-To: <20090108075246.GH23665@thunder.sbay.org> References: <20090108075246.GH23665@thunder.sbay.org> Message-ID: <20090108230712.GA1568@starshine.org> On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 11:52:46PM -0800, Ian Kluft wrote: > I'd like to discuss whether the RadioExam charter is ready to send to > the Board of Directors for approval. If yes, please say so. If not, > what changes does it need? > http://wiki.sbay.org/twiki/bin/view/SIGs/RadioExamCharterDiscussion > > The board will probably discuss scheduling a meeting as soon as the election > is done over the weekend. I've dug up the "SIG Charters" section of the bylaws-in-plain-English to use as a checklist. Summary: it looks like we've got all the parts, I only saw one spot where we might want to tune it up. 12.6 SIG Charters SIG charters contain: [*] - their purpose statement [*] - "Special Interest Group of the South Bay Community Network, Inc., a California non-profit corporation." [*] - that it's organized under article 12 of these bylaws [ ] - definitions of these things: [+] * their Officer positions, with roles and duties described We might want to say "oversees the SIG" and "are officers of this SIG" since some people reading too fast might think "the organization" somehow refers to Sbay as a whole, and that[having SIG leaders have to be officers 'upstream' within Sbay] would severely limit who could help steer a software dev project, possibly to people who just aren't cut out to do software-dev leadership if the crew running Sbay overall changes much. The duties we currently describe are the vague minimum "here to do what the SIG needs to do, per its bylaws and the parent org's requirements". Would we like to call out any particular roles? Or come up with them as a charter amendment later? A possible role might be whoever's at the heart of the source-control software, this being a software dev SIG. [+] * a title for their leader We seem to be defaulting to "SIG Coordinator". If that's ok I'm ok with it too. [*] * a method for selecting the leader, pick one: (*) + elected by SIG participants by one level of indirection; its Steering Committee is elected, then its Committee selects one among themselves to be Coordinator. It can be argued that this is the reason that its Steering Committee members all need to be corp members too, because they all need to qualify for the Coordinator post - even if we didn't require it per the item below. ( ) + appointed by the President ( ) + elected by the Board [*] - their method of removing officers [*] - their method of creating and deleting volunteer positions [*] - which officer position within the SIG matches the "SIG Coordinator" position within the corporation [*] - their procedures regarding voting on issues within the SIG [*] - their method of updating their own rules and policies [*] - the SIG Officers must be members in good standing of the corp. (Since the Board accepting the Application means accepting the SIG Officers they already had, this seems to come for free to the first batch of officers. But maybe we should make that explicit?) [*] - If Officer positions are elected, describes an election method for them. [*] - Any officer or volunteer can be removed from their post by the corp's Board. (type of vote not mentioned, so simple majority) [*] - Honor the corporate email list policies [*] - SIG policies can be removed by the Board. (vote type not mentioned, so simple majority) [*] - bylaws/corp policy/feds/state/local law override SIG policy. The overridden policy will be cancelled by the discovering Board or SIG Officers, and returned to its author with comments. [*] - Decision making procedures in Article 6 also govern SIGs. The SIG Coordinator supports and enforces this, and acts as arbiter when one is needed. [*] - Amending a SIG charter: announce the proposal to the SIG members and approve it by: * 2/3 simplae majority of the SIG members, and a simple majority of the Board * 2/3 absolute majority of the Board. These required items apply to the SIGs even if they aren't written in; a charter missing them will be amended to add required statements. (which is somewhat of a shortcut for being able to submit a charter with only the variable portions filled in, and let it get fixed into shape.) [*] (It does not require: how the SIG accepts members of its own.) However, this charter does list it, and the description looks good to me. . | . Heather Stern | --->*<--- star at starshine.org - * - (408) 761-4912 cell ' | ` KG6ZYC | (408) 374-7623 land From ikluft at thunder.sbay.org Fri Jan 9 01:11:43 2009 From: ikluft at thunder.sbay.org (Ian Kluft) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 01:11:43 -0800 Subject: [RadioExam Dev] charter ready to send to the board? In-Reply-To: <20090108230712.GA1568@starshine.org> References: <20090108075246.GH23665@thunder.sbay.org> <20090108230712.GA1568@starshine.org> Message-ID: <20090109091143.GL23665@thunder.sbay.org> On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 03:07:12PM -0800, Heather Stern wrote: > I've dug up the "SIG Charters" section of the bylaws-in-plain-English to use > as a checklist. The checklist already has all the charter requirements checked at http://wiki.sbay.org/twiki/bin/view/SIGs/RadioExamIncubationChecklist > Summary: it looks like we've got all the parts, I only saw one spot where > we might want to tune it up. > We might want to say "oversees the SIG" and "are officers of this SIG" since > some people reading too fast might think "the organization" somehow refers > to Sbay as a whole, [...] The definitions section already defines "the corporation" as SBAY. Since the charter uses "the organization" in places to refer to RadioExam, it can be added to the definitions to clear that up. > The duties we currently describe are the vague minimum "here to do what the > SIG needs to do, per its bylaws and the parent org's requirements". Would > we like to call out any particular roles? Or come up with them as a charter > amendment later? > > A possible role might be whoever's at the heart of the source-control > software, this being a software dev SIG. The Steering Committee is already given the authority to create volunteer positions and appoint volunteers to them. The allows the organization to evolve as needed without amending the charter every time. Since this is intended to be an Open Source Software project, the use of a Steering Committee is modeled after the "Project Management Committee" (PMC) used by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) for each of its projects. > [+] * a title for their leader > We seem to be defaulting to "SIG Coordinator". If that's ok I'm ok with it > too. "SIG Coordinator" is required by the bylaws to be defined in the charter. It can refer to any name. We just used Coordinator. ASF has a "PMC Chair" appointed by their Board of Directors. We differ in allowing each SIG to choose their own officers and coordinator. ASF actually requires that the PMC Chair has to be a vice president of their corporation. (So they have a huge number of vice presidents.) We require that SIG officers be members of our corporation. Those requirements are all to ensure that the project is legally part of the corporation. > by one level of indirection; its Steering Committee is elected, then its > Committee selects one among themselves to be Coordinator. It can be argued > that this is the reason that its Steering Committee members all need to be > corp members too, because they all need to qualify for the Coordinator post > - even if we didn't require it per the item below. It doesn't say this so it needs to be added. The Steering Committee was not supposed to be an annual term - appointments to the Steering Comittee are indefinite. Members of RadioExam are all the developers or operational participants. ASF has indefinite terms for its projects. Open Source projects usually do not elect their leadership - those who participate work their way up in meritocracy style. > [*] (It does not require: how the SIG accepts members of its own.) > > However, this charter does list it, and the description looks good to me. SIGs are not all required to be organized as membership organizations. On some projects, it wouldn't necessarily make sense. In this one, it does. From star at starshine.org Fri Jan 9 10:43:07 2009 From: star at starshine.org (Heather Stern) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 10:43:07 -0800 Subject: [RadioExam Dev] charter ready to send to the board? In-Reply-To: <20090109091143.GL23665@thunder.sbay.org> References: <20090108075246.GH23665@thunder.sbay.org> <20090108230712.GA1568@starshine.org> <20090109091143.GL23665@thunder.sbay.org> Message-ID: <20090109184307.GA3930@starshine.org> > > We might want to say "oversees the SIG" and "are officers of this SIG" since > > some people reading too fast might think "the organization" somehow refers > > to Sbay as a whole, [...] > > The definitions section already defines "the corporation" as SBAY. > Since the charter uses "the organization" in places to refer to RadioExam, > it can be added to the definitions to clear that up. OK, sounds good. > > by one level of indirection; its Steering Committee is elected, then its > > Committee selects one among themselves to be Coordinator. It can be argued > > that this is the reason that its Steering Committee members all need to be > > corp members too, because they all need to qualify for the Coordinator post > > - even if we didn't require it per the item below. > > It doesn't say this so it needs to be added. The Steering Committee was > not supposed to be an annual term - appointments to the Steering Comittee > are indefinite. > > Members of RadioExam are all the developers or operational participants. > > ASF has indefinite terms for its projects. Ahhhhhhhh OK. Yeah, this intent deserves to be mentioned; in fact, the way you described it: > Open Source projects usually do not elect their leadership - those who > participate work their way up in meritocracy style. ... looks just about perfect. > > [*] (It does not require: how the SIG accepts members of its own.) > > > > However, this charter does list it, and the description looks good to me. > > SIGs are not all required to be organized as membership organizations. On > some projects, it wouldn't necessarily make sense. In this one, it does. Yep :) . | . Heather Stern | --->*<--- star at starshine.org - * - (408) 761-4912 cell ' | ` KG6ZYC | (408) 374-7623 land From ikluft at thunder.sbay.org Mon Jan 12 19:56:31 2009 From: ikluft at thunder.sbay.org (Ian Kluft) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:56:31 -0800 Subject: [RadioExam Dev] charter ready to send to the board? In-Reply-To: <20090109091143.GL23665@thunder.sbay.org> References: <20090108075246.GH23665@thunder.sbay.org> <20090108230712.GA1568@starshine.org> <20090109091143.GL23665@thunder.sbay.org> Message-ID: <20090113035631.GA894@thunder.sbay.org> After fixing a problem with the wiki authentication which was a side effect of the recent OS upgrade, I updated the proposed charter on the wiki as suggested in my previous e-mail. I'd like to have us vote to approve this and send it to the Board of Directors before the next board meeting, probably later this month. On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 01:11:43AM -0800, Ian Kluft wrote: > The definitions section already defines "the corporation" as SBAY. > Since the charter uses "the organization" in places to refer to RadioExam, > it can be added to the definitions to clear that up. Done. > It doesn't say this so it needs to be added. The Steering Committee was > not supposed to be an annual term - appointments to the Steering Comittee > are indefinite. Done.