Jan Kulveit wrote:
Hello,
On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 01:54:15AM +0200, Anthere wrote: ...
I have given a bit of thought in the issue during the past few days, in reading all the emails on this list, and I had the opportunity today to talk with one of the co-founder of the Apache Foundation, in particular about the way their Foundation is organised. I put wikitech in copy, because I am pretty sure some of the guys there know the organisation and will be able to correct me if necessary.
I thought that his description of his Foundation... would very possibly fit pretty well what it seems many on this list are looking for and solve some of our current problems.
...
Each project has a governing committee in charge, on which there are at leasts 2 ASF members, and which report to the board of the ASF.
Comments ?
One dissimilarity - what are the "projects"? In the sense of ASF it may be Wikipedia, Wikinews, Commons, etc. Here the projects are language versions of "meta-projects". Commiters have common languages - code and English. Wikimedia projects do not. You can hardly effectively oversight a Wikimedia project if you dont understand the language. => question - if you take board members and their freinds, and maybe even theirs friends, does it cover the spectrum of Wikimedia languages? I would guess it doesn't.
If course it does not... I would be tempted to say that Wikimedia projects are the projects (so, Wikipedia, Wikinews etc...), rather than by breaking down to language. Why so ? Because even if they have a different language, the various language versions share the same goals (or precisely *should* share the same goal), the same needs and the same threats.
A direction of thought would be to examine to areas of authority of the PMC. Here are my suggestions * ensuring all projects are following the same goal * overseeing tm issues (the project logo, the project tm, domain names...) * overseeing the general threats facing this particular project (legal threats faced by wikiquote are definitly different from those faced by Wikipedia) * overseeing the licencing issue of the project (note that this naturally occured when wikinews chose another set of licensing... for all language version wide) * oversee technical needs (wikiversity or wiktionary needs are specific to a project, not to a language version)
etc...
Naturally, the PMC can not cover all languages version. But if that committee has 20 members (for example), I guess they will always cover more languages than the current board ;-)
Another dissimilarity is in the existence of local chapters. How do they fit in the above scheme?
I do not see why local chaters would get a specific involvement in the PMC scheme. They could get involved in the membership scheme by also having up to a certain number of representative on the Foundation.
Anyway, it would solve some current problems, but not all.
Sure.
Remind me what are the other problems you have in mind ?
Jan Kulveit