Its another talk about the foundation; I have to be the only non trustee who even bothers to talk about it. The reason for this one is quite interesting actually. I got a chance to sit down and have a nice long talk with seemant about a lot of issues surrounding the Foundation, Council and other area’s of gentoo in general.

For those who are developers this won’t be any new news but for the users this will be. Most if not all herds/projects have a few members that do the vast majority of the work to keep that project alive and floating. This has over my time with gentoo become very transparent, and i’m curious if its just a general state of apathy with developers. One solution I could think of would be to basically clear out all people in the herdlist for each project. Then add back only those who’ve done something fairly recently, and consistently. That’d shrink a lot of herds down in members, and probably show quite a few dev’s who are part of something now who really don’t do anything for any project. It might also kick their ass into motion, to start doing something. If not then quite frankly its time for them to retire from being a full dev.

Part of the reason I mention the above is that gentoo needs a good transfusion of blood so to speak. We rely heavily on a few people (all projects do in the open source community, as in the business world). In the foundation that’s seemant doing the 501(C)6 stuff with the lawyers (thank you for your assistance lawyers.). Grant doing the financial reports (*poke* I’m still looking for the 1st quarters by the way. How did the talks with paypal go as well?) and probably one of the core members of the trustee’s. The final person that I see doing a good amount is spyderous, who happens to be doing the bank transfer stuff so that all trustee’s can deal with the money in the accounts etc. I’d like to see all three of them back on the trustee board for another year. However like all things  we need some young new people to help get things moving and keep going.

Now this hasn’t been discussed really as far as I can tell, but that’s three devs out of the original thirteen that have appeared to do something productive for the project. At least three have left for one reason or another as well. Its a rough start, and as part of that, its being considered to lower the number of trustee’s down to seven. It’d create hopefully a tighter knit group who can be as productive and active as the Council is.

So that raises the question of who is going to run if they were suggested, or would want to. That is a problem as the Foundation is thought of as the boring dull stuff; that no one wants to do with their own finances or legal wrangling that confuse even the most versed in legal jargon. That perception however needs to change, as does the overall perception of the Foundation. Its as intricate a part of the Gentoo Project as GCC.

I’d love to put my feet where my mouth is, and go for becoming one of the trustee’s like a few of the current trustee’s have suggested, and I’m sure would put me in for nomination if they could. Alas, its not meant to be this year as I’m about 6 months short of having been a developer long enough. I’m sure though that the trustee’s will find some way for me to help out on a committee or such. Please also note that elections are coming up very soon, so please start considering running or nominating people who will actually take action.