[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the board?

[Anthere]

Lord Voldemort wrote:
> On 6/19/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at 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