[Foundation-l] A Board member's perspective

Sun May 9 00:18:08 UTC 2010

Stu,

Thank you for telling us your views. You have admitted that the way
this was dealt with was "messy". That such an approach would be messy
should have been obvious to everyone involved, so do you think it
would have been better to take a less messy approach? Perhaps the
Board could have issued a statement saying that the current situation
was unacceptable, explaining why, and that they would have to
intervene to fix it if the community didn't sort it out by a certain
deadline.

Unfortunately, this looks to me like the board couldn't really agree
on what to do so made a vague enough statement that those board
members that didn't feel it was right to go in a delete everything
wouldn't oppose it but that Jimmy could claim supported his view and
legitimised him doing whatever the hell he pleased. The board needs to
be stronger - when Jimmy does things like this it reflects badly on
all of you, so you need to keep him under control. If you can't agree
on what to do, you need to either defer to the community or come up
with a genuine compromise rather than political manoeuvring to avoid
being responsible for what happens. Also, it would help us choose
board members if you were more public about your disagreements. You
don't have to all present a united front behind Jimmy.