Board meeting now.

[Sean Egan]

apologies for top-posting. I believe it's been cleared up to you over
XMPP that IM Freedom Inc does not control the development of Pidgin or
any related project, but exists primarily to limit the liability of
individual contributors (yourself included) and hold money to be used
as decided by the board to further the cause of freedom in instant
messaging.

You're correct that the work of non-voting developers on the various
projects affiliated with IM Freedom will be used to solicit donations,
but it is in no way accurate to claim that IM Freedom in any way
controls Pidgin. IM Freedom will use Pidgin to solicit donations and
then determine how best to apply those donations back to improving it.

Development decisions will still be made the same way as always: long
drawn out arguments on IRC and mailing lists.

Does this clear things up for you?


On 5/15/07, Peter Lawler <spam_spam_spam_and_spam at bleeter.id.au> wrote:
> Hi Sean,
> To cover my comments on the devel at c.p.i, I'll follow up here.
>
> 1) I apologise for not bringing this topic up earlier.
> 2) The initial constitution and board were voted on by a closed loop.
> That loop was only the people 'involved' in the AOL issue, not
> necessarily all devs and cpw's (ie, actively interested parties)
> 3) The constitution isn't easily available*. One has to ask and then be
> pointed to a message in a previously closed mail list.
> 4) The President and Lead of Pidgin work for Corporate IM companies.
> There is nothing in the constitution that would force them to excuse
> themselves from any topic based on conflict of interest.
> 5) IMFreedom.org is taking monies based partly on my work, yet I have
> had *no* say in it's initial setup until three weeks ago (well after the
> horse has bolted).
>
> One of the reasons, apart from lack of time, that I didn't mention any
> of this earlier is that I just *know* many of the board members with be
> saying right now 'Oh, shut up Pete, it's only Pidgin. It's our source,
> we'll do what we like.' or similar. Which is, of course, my point
> entirely. It's not all your own source. No one owns it. I find it odd
> that a corporate entity can take control of my code without any input
> from me whatsoever.
>
> I appreciate that the product itself is not a democracy, however as a
> CPW and occasional IRC contributor, I feel the above whilst worthy of
> treatment for Random Q User in #pidgin is a bit out of order for the
> fostering of collaborative input from others. I only hope no one posts
> similar to 'Pidgin now controlled by Corporate IM employees' to /.
>
> Yes, this post would no doubt been more thoughtful if I'd spent more
> time composing it, but I'm sure I would have still missed the three week
> 'deadline'.
>
> Regards,
>
> Pete.
>
> * http://pidgin.im/pipermail/cabal/2006-November/000154.html
>
> Sean Egan wrote:
> > xmpp:boardroom at conference.pidgin.im?join
> > _______________________________________________
> > Devel mailing list
> > Devel at pidgin.im
> > http://pidgin.im/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devel
> >
>
>