Board meeting now.

[Kevin M Stange]

Mark Doliner wrote:
> On Wed, 16 May 2007 13:11:35 +1000, Peter Lawler wrote
>> I think you're probably aware that I 
>> have been concerned for some time that we (Pidgin) have no procedure 
>> in place for what on earth to do when conflicts of interest arise 

I really hope that the guys who are running IM Freedom, Inc. have got
the best interests of Pidgin in mind and would never allow their
employers or anyone else to compromise those interests as developers.  I
trust the current board to keep their two or three roles appropriately
separated.  I also trust them to make sure that when they find new
people to fill their spots, they will find people of comparable
character.  I'm really not worried.

Having a clause for conflicts of interest in the rule book is certainly
a wise idea in the long run, but with a board of 7 people, I would hope
that the other 6 would be able to identify and overrule such conflicts.
 If it becomes a necessity, those same 6 people are presumably
sufficient to either amend the bylaws on their own or remove the
offending member and replace him.  I can't imagine there will be 4
simultaneous conflicts of interest at one time.

By the same token, the development team of Pidgin is large and growing,
and there are many vocal members involved, as well as a vocal (sometimes
whiny) community.  I do not think a conflict of interest would go
unnoticed or unchallenged.

If ever Sean went on a mad Googlification of Pidgin, for example, I am
sure a lot of people would step in to clobber some sense into him, or
we'd have a half dozen forks by the end of the week! :)

> If I ever do something that someone thinks I have a conflicting interest in
> then please call me out on it and make me feel really bad.  You can even throw
> things at me (although, unless you're khc then you're probably pretty far away
> and unlikely to hit me).

I believe that it's a conflict of interest that you're both a developer
and a user of Pidgin.  It's time to start replacing the board with
people who don't even know what it is!  /me mails khc a brick!

Kevin

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://pidgin.im/pipermail/devel/attachments/20070516/bbe912f4/attachment.sig>