[Foundation-l] Restricting Appointed members (Proposal).

[Henning Schlottmann]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> The Board is not and should not be a professional body. Board's
> responsibility is to choose a good Executive Director and to give to
> them to organize professionals to do professional tasks.

The board guards the mission, decides over strategic issues, hires the 
ED and has oversight over her/his work and the foundations finances.

> Otherwise, we are at the magic circle: The Board chooses Board's
> members, who are only responsible to the Board. 

That's the way it is with non-membership foundations. They are 
controlled only by the bylaws - and the IRS. WMF is a non-membership 
foundation, and rightly so. A decent global representation of the 
community could never be cast in a legal framework.

> And if it is so, than
> two very different entities will definitely start to exist: The Board
> and the community. And if we get such partitioning, schisms, like
> Encyclopedia Libre will not be exception(s), but ordinary things. Or,
> if the community becomes more organized, than it will be able to chose
> some other company (for profit or not for profit) to host its content.

The board and the WMF will very soon have only limited connection to the 
projects. Hosting wikis will not be a major part of the WMFs operations.

It would be foolish to give the communities perpetual, large influence 
on the WMF, because being well connected in the community of editors 
will not be a helpful expertise for running WMF.

  Ciao Henning