[Foundation-l] Foundation Discretion on Personnel Matters

Sat Dec 15 13:22:11 UTC 2007

On 15/12/2007, Mike Godwin <mnemonic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> David Goodman writes:
>
> >  Yes, the board must have the discretion to choose the appropriate
> > course, and in this instance it chose wrongly.  It takes good
> > judgement to know how much to release, and the judgment proved not to
> > be good.  The bias towards secrecy would be the apparent reason.
>
> Apart from my disagreement about Goodman's evaluation of our
> judgments, I am charmed to have been accused, for the first time in my
> life, with a "bias towards secrecy." Anyone familiar with me or my
> work would have presumed my bias had been in the opposite direction.
>
> As Kant pointed out, acting against one's inclinations is often an
> indicator of moral judgment.

I think the accusation was towards the board, not you. The board have,
on multiple occasions, chosen secrecy over transparency, and I don't
believe that they were all for legal reasons. I'm happy to believe
that you would only advise secrecy for legal reasons (it's not your
job to give advice for any other reasons, after all), but at the end
of the day, it isn't your decision, and your advise isn't the only
deciding factor.