[Foundation-l] thoughts on leakages

Fri Jan 11 21:07:48 UTC 2008

Andrew Whitworth wrote:
> On Jan 11, 2008 1:54 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Jussi-ville is exactly right. Who will police the board? The board
>> themselves? Riight. If the board were to become corrupted, there would
>> be no check on them.
>>     
> We could reach a certain level of paranoia that is really absurd. The
> better idea is to mandate qualifications on who can become a board
> member in the first place, mandate that the community must have a hand
> in electing the majority of the board, and limit terms to something
> reasonable. It may also be worth adding the restriction that the board
> cannot appoint it's own members, except perhaps in some extenuated
> circumstances (mass resignation, etc).
>
> If we had "police" for the board, then who would oversee these police?
> what if the police became corrupt? If we are sufficiently paranoid,
> there are simply no acceptable solutions. We need to have faith in the
> board members we elect, and take solace in the fact that terms are
> time-limited.
Indeed, a Board that is fully corrupted would be greater than the sum of 
seven individual corruptions. Since individuals have different 
thresholds of corruptibility such a scenario would not likely happen 
overnight.  I do not attribute any of these recent events to malice.  
Errors of judgement should never be interpreted as anything more than 
that.  Suspicions arise when a board inexplicably ignores events and 
their lessons.  The perception of a corrupt Board is a cumulative 
perception of ignored lessons.

Ec