Except that isn’t what the Community Bylaws says, because it was agreed to be overly generic and easy to abuse. Now it is the following:
What the Community Bylaws doesn’t give, but the “comment” does is some form of justification why this is claimed to be necessary: “because, in the past, people made decisions in the interest of their employers rather than in the interest of The Document Foundation.”
This claim badly needs further explanation: how exactly is that possible by being a regular member? (member of the Board of Trustees and not member of the foundation’s other bodies) What kind of decisions such a member can make where this even comes up?
The other problem with the claim is that it’s just an accusation, not a fact, at least as far as I’m aware there is no conclusion to any legal claims affirming it, and I’m sure the other parties claim they were also acting in the interest of the foundation. Either way, the respective paragraph is only applied while a legal claim is open, which makes the justification highly questionable: universally the possibility of people following other interest has to be mitigated in other ways, which the foundations claims to have done by introducing new rules.
It’s understandable if the foundation doesn’t want people affiliated with the other side to impact the chances of their legal claims, but members of the BoT have no impact on that. Being excluded from the Board of Directors, or standing in election to be a BoD member during that time could sufficiently cover that, but that’s not what got into the Bylaws.
Thus my question is, why did the current wording get into the Bylaws? What is the interest behind forcing affiliated members out, how does souring relations with its contributors serve the foundation?
not sure where you read about an agreement but one of your colleagues provided constructive feedback which has been taken onboard and we narrowed down the types of legal claims as it could have indeed been abused.
Now the full paragraph reads like this:
Members involved in legal claims for endangering the Foundation, eg. by means of putting the charitable status at risk, or misusing TDF’s funds, or by damaging any of TDF’s assets, or by attempting to do any of these must relinquish their membership by means of notification to the MC. If the legal claim, in relation to the mentioned matters, involves a company/organisation then also their affiliated members must relinquish their membership.
As you can see it is quite narrow as it applies to extremely serious cases and particularly to directors as they would be in a position of acting in such a damaging way.
Some have actually managed to generate situations and legal claims including all the element listed in that clause.
I would recommend you, and also your colleagues, to ask the managing director of the company you are working for to have a very honest chat to ask him what’s the actual legal situation, at what stage we are in the legal process and why he decided to make up the story of TDF ejecting you instead of explaining to you that it would have been just a temporary inconvenience while things are being settled between TDF and his company.
In the meantime I recommend you read more in this forum to see if you start spotting that some people tried to warn the trustees that things were quite wrong since a while and also this official statements that gives you some clear pointers:
apologies, I thought I gave you all the elements necessary to answer your questions.
Let’s try again:
As stated:
then
Generally it doesn’t apart from cases such as the one present in the official statement I linked to in my previous answer.
Because it derives from cases of extremely bad behaviour which we need to prevent in future, they apply generally to directors but might affect also members of the BoT as in the case described.
There is absolutely no interest in forcing affiliated members out. That’s a spin entirely fabricated by your employer.
I recommended to have an honest talk with him to see if he would explain at least to you what strategy is behind his attempt to mislead not only his contractors but the community at large.
Souring relations don’t help TDF, the company you are working for, its contractors, our contributors or our wider community.
There was no intention of souring the relations with you or anyone else. Members have been informed of the issues, read the Community Bylaws and understood why it was necessary to have clauses that would have only temporarily affected you and your colleagues.
However, relations are indeed sour with those that have and contributed to impose business interests that put TDF and its community at risk as stated in the Community Bylaws. Rules are now in place to limit the eventuality of seeing similar behaviours in a direct or indirect way.
Those that played no part in damaging TDF are very welcome to reapply for membership as soon as a settlement is reached between TDF and their employer.
I hope you are satisfied by the more direct answers to your questions.
Thank you for your reply, I appreciate you sharing your opinion on the main points this time.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the only relevant part of the post I can find on “affecting also members of the BoT” is the following:
There are factual errors in this statement, as there are no “company representatives” on the BoD, and any of them affiliated by a company were not “elected by employees of the same companies”, but by the membership as a whole.
Regardless, I already noted that the measure is only applied while a legal claim is open, so it is unable to prevent any future “bad behaviour.” However, if the issue is that a member affiliated with a company a legal claim is against could run for BoD membership, I gave a suggestion earlier on what could be done to mitigate that.
Please note that the ad nauseam repeat claims of “extremely bad behaviour” to justify terminating the membership of upstanding members by association aren’t helped by factually stating that indeed the expulsion is only mandated for a potentially fleeting period while a legal claim is open.
There seems to be a mistake in this statement, as the audit was done last year, while the Community Bylaws with the mentioned restrictive measure was accepted earlier this year.
To repeat:
This rule is unable to achieve what it is claimed to be for,
This rule wasn’t needed for a positive audit outcome,
There are other ways to avoid if eg. an involved party on the BoD affecting the chances of a legal claim.
I must ask again: what is the reason behind forcing out affiliated members who haven’t done anything wrong, aren’t involved in legal claims, and generally have done nothing but furthered the foundation’s goals with their contributions?
There must be one, because such an extreme measure ended up being voted in despite several members and board members expressing concerns. Has the board taken legal counsel on the proposal before the vote, and if so, what was its conclusion?
if seems like we have different opinion in relation to the effectiveness of rules that have been implemented in the Community Bylaws to reduce the likelihood of seeing in a repeat of behaviours that led to the issues you have surely read about in the email the board sent to the members the 10th of February.
The dissuasive measure added to the Community Bylaws, that you don’t seem to see as very effective, is complemented by the introduction of the Code of Ethics and Fiduciary duties, which provide (hopefully) clearer guidelines on how directors should behave and improvements in the Conflict of Interest Policy.
Like in all things there might be room for improvement so please do suggest how all these rules and policies can be made clearer and better.
In the meantime it’s important to me to understand if it’s clear for you that you can reapply for membership as soon as the legal matters have been settled.
Happy have you as a member of our community and soon (again) as a member of the board of trustees.