Hoi, When you argue that the WMF has been good at keeping the servers running, and when Sue has been hired to make sure that the WMF can do more than that, she is only starting to do her job. The community elects the board largely. The board has indicated that it cannot do this job and has been looking with mixed results for staff that takes over this responsibility.
It has been made clear that Sue has the authority to hire and fire. She has hired Erik. I am convinced that the board has been consulted on this. I am equally convinced that all legal and practical hurdles will have been examined and taken out of the way *before *the announcement was made. Just consider, when Erik would not be able to take this job for whatever reason, he would still be entitled to his position as board member. When the possibility of Erik taking this position would have been made public knowledge, I am sure that the same noises that are for or against whatever, would insist that it would be more "transparent" for him to resign his board position first. Things are not good or they are wrong.
I am sorry for selfish reasons that Erik is taking this job however it is none of my business where Erik decides to take a job. I expect that Sue will get a lot of support from Erik and as a result the WMF will get a lot of more work done. The only practical reservation that I have is that the board just lost a member who spend a lot of time doing all kinds of jobs for the foundation. I am not sure that a next board member will not be willing or able to spend as much time as Erik did. Then again, this is exactly what the board wants.
Thanks, GerardM
On Dec 18, 2007 10:59 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/12/2007, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Chad wrote:
It just screams that they were planning it,
Yes, we really hate people who plan ahead. When staff and board members wake up in the morning, they should ask the mailing list which way to comb their hair. Nothing must be planned behind our backs. It's a conspiracy!
Meanwhile, Brion orders dozens of new servers without asking this list what kind of RAM they should have. The servers keep running.
The difference is that for the most part Brion can point to his record of keeping the servers running in order to do pretty much what he likes. The foundation as soon as it goes beyond shoestring ISP can't.
-- geni
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