On Sep 4, 2006, at 2:48 PM, Charles M. Hannum wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 10:17:24AM -0700, Andy Ruhl wrote:
>> I can't agree with these arguments from the surface (I know nothing
>> about the inner workings of TNF, I have to admit).
>
> And you can't, because:
>
> 1) Substantially all of the discussion about the new bylaws (and the
>    outright lies I mentioned) was on a secret mailing list.
>
> 2) So are most of the complaints about the current structure.
>
> 3) In fact, much of it is even hidden from the committer community.
>    Last year's nomcom (or was it the year before? fuzzy memory.)
>    complained bitterly that the whole process was a sham and a train
>    wreck, but they couldn't even tell the committer community what
>    happened!
>

So- the questions in my mind, at this point:

-So, there are developers all over the world (I reasonably suspect,  
but haven't checked) signing some contract with an .org (.com?  
perhaps) based on laws of... Delaware, USA?  Why do they feel held to  
terms of a "secret" and perhaps dubious contract with some foundation  
in the USA?

-Why has no-one yet said "no, there isn't a separate mailing list,  
set of decision makers, etc (I have lost track-- what else? there has  
been a bit that should be definitively true, or false- and we are  
techie enough here that "anonymous" disclosure of evidence of things  
"hidden" that should in fact be known isn't ridiculously difficult).

-If there is a commercial link (which is where the complaints have  
the most ramifications, at least to me-- much of the rest could be  
personalities), it's not unfixable- anything coded in a commercial  
line that isn't in the .org tree, needs to come back.  Linksys did  
it.  So what's up with that?

I'm just a minor user of a minor port, but I have contributed to the  
NetBSD thing financially in a minor way too :).

For more perspective on my background, I'm a cellular biologist, have  
worked for a major pharamaceutical company as well as in small  
biotechnology, and the developers agreement linked to earlier is  
similar to the commercial NDA's I've signed, and in fact is more  
controlling than some I have signed even for work in industry.  From  
what I have seen here, the agreement here resembles a commercial  
agreement more so than OSS agreements, and I'm curious as to why.

Brian