Authority

Posted Sep 27, 2018 16:36 UTC (Thu) by martin.langhoff (subscriber, #61417)
In reply to: Authority by corbet
Parent article: The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

I don't disagree with you, but doing it within the community is also fraught... differently :-)

For example, SFC keeps money and does accounting on behalf of FOSS projects that _could_ do it themselves. But I remember the era of conflict in FOSS projects over $150 in money for DNS and hosting. That's mostly gone - in part thanks to sourceforge/github/gitlab, and in part thanks to SLC.

Today, many projects have slightly more interesting amounts of money, and disburse it in sponsorships for conference attendance, etc; and there's almost no problem.

Could they do their own accounting -- probably? Is it best left to professionals who are less invested?

To be clear, let me emphasize the _advisory_ aspect of the role I am suggesting, and that such an organization would have to earn its trust (as SLC has done) over time, with even-handed solutions to actual conflicts brought to its inbox.

Anyway, just an interesting tool, for more than interesting times.