Hi, There has been various questions raised about several topics related to DebConf15 organization. I'm trying to wrap-up a single answer covering all questions. Sorry for not replying earlier. I was travelling during the past week, and ended up having much less free time than I expected. I should probably have posted a VAC message. 1) Respective governance & decision making of DebConf, DC15 and the DC15 legal entity As you know, there is an ongoing (slow) discussion about DebConf governance. I believe that my position is best summarized by the excerpt from the draft delegation below (for DebConf chairs): ---------------------------------------->8 DebConf is organized by the DebConf team (aka DebConf organization team), that gathers many Debian contributors, both from the general Debian community and from a local team. The DebConf chairs are Debian Project delegates who act as a liaison between the Debian Project and the DebConf team to ensure the success of DebConf. Specifically: * The DebConf chairs are ultimately responsible for the organization of DebConf and for the use of Debian resources (e.g.; money, Debian trademarks) to that end; * The DebConf chairs advise the DebConf team and share their experience of DebConf organization; * The DebConf chairs help the DebConf team define a structure (esp. in terms of sub-teams and roles definition) and decision-making processes that suits the requirements of DebConf generally, and of a specific edition of DebConf; * The DebConf chairs monitor the progress of DebConf organization and ensure that the defined team structure and decision-making processes remain functional and sufficiently efficient to ensure a successful DebConf; * When necessary, e.g.; when the DebConf team's inability to make a decision has an important impact on DebConf organization, or when a decision taken by the DebConf team is perceived by the DebConf chairs as creating serious risks for the organization of DebConf, the DebConf chairs can override the DebConf team for a specific decision. ---------------------------------------->8 To put it differently: DebConf chairs have the power to veto any decision made by the DebConf team. However, ideally, they should never have to use that veto power, because the DebConf team should have listened to their opinions and advices beforehand. On the other hand, the DebConf team must have some freedom to make implementation choices that empowers them to make their own, very special, DebConf: the chairs are here to make sure that those implementation choices are not threatening the success of DebConf. (Note that this is already the case in the current delegation. The draft above just makes it a bit more explicit.) Reflecting this repartition of powers in the bylaws of a local entity is quite challenging (similar to when a TO needs to codify that decisions about Debian funds held by a TO are ultimately made by the DPL). I don't think that this strictly needs to be written in stone in the bylaws, but rather that the people involved are in agreement with it. (also, I cannot comment on the proposed bylaws for the DC15 legal entity -- my mastering of German is nowadays mostly limited to knowing what my name means, and answering 'I kann nicht Deutsch sprechen' to the occasional emails in German ;) ) There's further work to do DebConf governance. But I'd rather see incremental suggestions based on the above proposal, rather than completely independent proposals. 2) Should the DC15 local legal entity be a TO? Past DebConf history shows that local entities created for the purpose of organizing a DebConf edition tends to linger around for some time after DebConf. So I don't think that the creation of this legal entity should be taken lightly. As Martin wrote in <[🔎] 20140417201402.GA7341@fishbowl.rw.madduck.net>, the TO guidelines are just guidelines, and a temporary legal entity created for a specific edition of DebConf might not have to follow all of them. However, for transparency, I think that the TO guidelines are a good basis, and that the DC15 legal entity should describe how they meet those guidelines, including mentioning which ones they feel are irrelevant for their particular case. So, I think that the simplest solution is to make the DC15 local legal entity a TO, while keeping in mind that this is at this point a temporary TO for the purpose of organizing DC15, and that some criteria can thus easily be waived. If the TO would like to continue to act as a general-purpose TO after DC15, we would then have to revisit the guidelines that were waived at this point. I'll reply to Richard's email about TO status separately -- I have a few further comments. 3) Naming of the legal entity / use of 'Debian' This would have to be further discussed inside the trademark team, but I don't think that using 'Debian Deutschland' for the (temporary) TO should be a problem. Lucas
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