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Linux Foundation Quietly Drops Community Representation (dreamwidth.org)
The Linux Foundation, though it's straightforwardly not a grassroots organization along the lines of the FSF or EFF, has long had a degree of non-corporate involvement by way of community-elected members on its board. Now, writes new submitter Ensign Nemo, that's no longer true. An excerpt from Matthew Garrett's blog on the change:
The by-laws were amended to drop the clause that permitted individual members to elect any directors. Section 3.3(a) now says that no affiliate members may be involved in the election of directors, and section 5.3(d) still permits at-large directors but does not require them[2]. The old version of the bylaws are here - the only non-whitespace differences are in sections 3.3(a) and 5.3(d).
These changes all happened shortly after Karen Sandler announced that she planned to stand for the Linux Foundation board during a presentation last September. A short time later, the "Individual membership" program was quietly renamed to the "Individual supporter" program and the promised benefit of being allowed to stand for and participate in board elections was dropped (compare the old page to the new one).
These changes all happened shortly after Karen Sandler announced that she planned to stand for the Linux Foundation board during a presentation last September. A short time later, the "Individual membership" program was quietly renamed to the "Individual supporter" program and the promised benefit of being allowed to stand for and participate in board elections was dropped (compare the old page to the new one).
oh look, there's proud SJW and perpetual FOSS shitstirrer Mathew Garet making unsubstantiated charges of a conspiracy against a Linux trade organization. All because a parasitical lawyer who's attached herself to OSS organizations to promote her radical feminist agenda (and not free software) won't get to join the trade organization's board of directors (LF is not a charity) so that she try an influence them to donate to a organization whose function now is to sue the members of the industry which is responsible for the spread of Linux globally. Not a single line of worthwhile source code has been released as a result of GPL enforcement lawsuits, but they have generated legal fees, which is what this is pretty much about and her exorbitant salary. Hey Intel, HP, Red Hat, CoreOS, etc., when are you going to purge these enablers who only contribute nothing but toxicity and discord amongst the community?
PS.Since MG likes conspiracy theories maybe he should ask about the curious circumstances surrounding the Gnome Foundation's delayed releasing the its financials statement only after Karen secured her position on SFC. I'm sure the board members would have like to asked a few questions during her interview if they had known about the apparent mismanagement of funds that almost entirely went to supporting Karen's pet project, the OPW.
My guess is the existing board changed it, which may well also be within their rights based on the existing by-laws. As to why, my best guess might be because they don't like Karen Sandler, who was previously running the GNOME Foundation at the time when they ran out of money (previously discussed here) after blowing a lot of it on outreach programs for women developers.
It's hardly a stretch to assume that they don't want someone around who will complain about not having enough developers or contributors so satisfy those more concerned with the type of genitalia possessed by those writing the code than the quality of it. Of course no one will come out and say this directly, but after watching other open source projects get crapped on by moral-crusaders that contribute little or nothing of actual use to the project, it's not too hard to read between the lines and conclude the Linux Foundation wants to keep those people out to avoid the hassle of dealing with them.