Notices by Richard Littauer (richlitt@mastodon.social)

I get that board directors have a responsibility to the organization. I've served on nonprofit boards. I know what that means.

It does not mean you need to publicly agree with all of a board's decisions.

Again, this is bonkers. It's 3:00am where I am and I'm just kind of sitting here gazing into the middle distance, wondering whether I need to start a new nonprofit just to allow big tent open source to have a voice that says: "You matter, your rights as an author of FOSS matter."

@downey This is my first time learning about the gag rule for talking about the OSI work.

"[Directors can expect each other] to Disagree during Board deliberation but support publicly all Board decisions, especially those that do not have unanimous consent."

This is horrible. This makes me wonder about so many conversations I have had with board directors over the years, and it also explains a good deal of silence I have gotten to some questions.

You need to allow dissent in the open.

@downey Bugger the outside, this damages the reputation of the OSI even to those in the FOSS movement. And that includes corporate OSS! I say this as someone who is blessed enough to have an affiliate seat.

Our ideals and vision are always bigger than reality, and it's always difficult to work in the open and in any arena.

But surely, I mean, surely the OSI can do better than this.

The OSIs purpose is to be a trusted, legitimate source of truth for what open source is and how to use it.

When they fail at holding meaningful, equitable elections, and when they push through controversial work like OSAID and then gag board members from disagreeing with it publicly, they undermine their own work.

I don't know if the OSI needs to exist right now to legitimize OSS. It doesn't stop snake oil OSS or open washing. Surely the public can just call a spade a spade on their own.

@skinnylatte Those are some great herons! Their necks look short I hope they're ok

@evan Put another way: my discomfort is part of your Canadian defense strategy, and yes, I feel it.

@evan I agree with you on that. I just recognize that a good amount of my friends and community will likely agree with you if there is aggression from the US to Canada, and would likely be interested in doing physical acts of warfare against a fascist state.

The goal of taking US land would, I assume, be to cause regime change in the US to stop future aggression.

@evan as a Vermonter, this is disconcerting.

Perhaps an amendment: "Cause maximum pain to US citizens who are not part of the resistance."

@rachel Not the first person to throw this my way. :D Wasn't me, still curious who it was.

Having their Cake and eating it too: Conflicting and unreal expectations of women in "Short Skirt / Long Jacket".

In this essay I will...

"The first criterion of loyalty to the organization becomes complicity. Career advancement is not based on merit, and not even based necessarily on being someone’s cousin; above all, it’s based on a willingness to play along with the fiction that career advancement is based on merit, even though everyone knows this not to be true."

- David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules.

@ntnsndr I want to talk to you over a hangout for 15-30 minutes about governance of scientific nomenclature. Would you be up for that? I think you'd learn some stuff, and I think you could help me too.

Posting publicly because anyone else is welcome.

@khinsen I would be really interested to talk about this on the https://podcast.sustainoss.org podcast, if you're interested. :)

@ntnsndr I hear that! The difference is the lack of the original custodians of the land.

I agree that, as another way of demanding attention, it continues to be a tool of colonialization. I just argue that it is another tool itself, not an incursion on native land.

"Governable spaces must calibrate what they expect of people to a condition of metagovernance, of traversing multiple, plural governance environments in a way that is sustainable, tolerable, and comprehensible."

I think this requires higher policy changes between platforms, depending on the space. I think we've seen this sort of result come from cultural movements. CoCs spring to mind.

@ntnsndr

@ntnsndr You mention other books are better introductions for online governance. What are they for someone at my level, esp. regarding OSS?

Very much enjoying diving into Governable Spaces by @ntnsndr this evening. Already underlined and learned a few things, and I'm only four pages in.

@ntnsndr Can I post quotes and screenshots from within the book?

@sb What is a good alternative to Substack? TinyLetter just died, and I don't have an alt. lined up yet.

I have one greatest fear, and I'm coming closer to realizing it as my greatest desire and inevitability the older I get.