[Foundation-l] Board meeting report

[Michael Snow]

Kat Walsh wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:11 PM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net> wrote
>   
>> For the broader discussion, first of all, thanks to everyone who gave
>> their input here, it was tremendously valuable. As indicated earlier, we
>> didn't have this conversation to make an immediate decision at the
>> meeting. The board does want to maintain our commitment, as reflected in
>> both the foundation and the community, to free and open access to
>> knowledge. Along those lines, the earlier draft of a file format policy
>> will be revisited, and we may consider passing a revised version.
>> However, it's also not clear that this would be a good idea. One issue
>> would be if it inadvertently prohibits positive approaches in the
>> future, such as the uses for Flash that Brion mentioned. (At least,
>> nobody seemed to have a problem with those, please correct me if that's
>> not the case.) So I wonder if it might not be wiser to avoid attempting
>> something at the board level that requires us to pin down definitions
>> for file formats, platforms, and so on in ways that may have unintended
>> consequences. Further feedback and discussion is welcome.
>>     
> Well, since you've opened it up to discussion...!
>
> As Michael says, there weren't really any hard decisions made on this
> -- more of a discussion of our varying points of view and reasoning.
> And so I will give my own opinion in response to his: I'm in favor of
> having a firm resolution so there is some clear and definite text to
> point to that says we do have that commitment to openness, and gives a
> set of criteria to evaluate a new proposal with. (It's possible the
> drafting may turn out to exclude something we all agree should be
> permitted, or have other unintended consequences, in which case I
> think we could all agree to amend it! I don't believe the current
> proposal disallows anything we would allow -- in particular it takes
> into account things like acceptable subsets of otherwise problematic
> formats -- but I hope people will correct obvious omissions in the
> posted draft.) But I think it would be worthwhile to have as an
> explanation of what we're doing -- or not doing -- and why.
>   
Describing the value of it like this makes it sound to me like a policy 
or resolution is not necessarily the right answer, but that it would 
still be useful for the board to indicate the Wikimedia Foundation's 
thinking on the issue. Should we look at some other way of making a 
statement? I get the point you're making, but I would like it better if 
we were saying something we don't need to unsay if there are issues 
later, we can just build on it.
>> Finally,
>> I'll just save the chapter business for a separate email in the next day
>> or so.
>>     
> Well, now you're just leaving people in suspense! :-)
>   
Not that Kat herself was in any suspense, but I hope I've alleviated 
that now.

--Michael Snow