Lord Voldemort wrote:
On 6/19/06, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
My question would be: do /you /know your who is
who and, what is /your
/claim to fame.. ?? I know you from the mailing lists ..
Can we stop all these pot shots and belly aching? Who gives a crap
what people's credentials are at this point in time? If someone does
decide to try for a Board position, _then_ you can critique him or
her. Let's all act like grown ups here.
Errr... Erik explicitely said he was interested in a position on the
board...
But whatever.
But to the point (and I am sure this has been proposed
in some form
before), for whomever mentioned here that is not eventually on the
Board, why not just set aside a small portion of the budget to use as
"consultant fees"? Those not on the Board, but whose opinions would
help, could be taken on as consultants to make suggestions to the
Board. Nothing would be concrete, but some of these people might not
consult without getting paid. Others may simply require a nice
official invitation from Jimmy or WMF in general.
I am under the impression that anyone can come in to make suggestions,
but perhaps asking nicely would drum up some advice (if we are indeed
looking for it). If much of this (consultant fees) has been suggested
before, would you mind pointing in the right direction? Thanks. --LV
Actually... we have used advice from outside parties on a pro-bono
basis. For newbie, that means someone accept to work for free for the
Foundation - in exchange, they (the person or the firm) get some
fame/advertisement and most presumably, this can be deduced as "gift to
a charity" in term of tax.
This was for example the case of Brad law firm and is the case as well
for a PR agency giving us advice from time to time.
Other "legal" entities have also helped against fees (I do not know if
we got a "special" price).
I believe RMS and others regularly give "advice" to how the Foundation
or the projects should be run (just as journalists, librairians etc do
...). These advices are given to Jimbo during conferences they attend
together. We have from time to time some feedback about opinion of one
or another about the way we should go for licensing or other topics...
My only problem with this type of "advice" is that the advice is not
given to the board, but to Jimbo. If the Foundation was to pay for
advice, I would ask that the Foundation be informed. Not one member
exclusively.
This said, I would be hesitant to pay someone to give me some advice...
with the full knowledge that the advice would be entached with the
personal agenda of its provider (surely, Lessig would not advice us
against his interest).
Note that this is also the reason why I am not so happy with having a
famous person with a strong agenda on the (governing) board.
ant