[Foundation-l] A proposal for organisation

[Anthere]

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