Participation in Discussions Regarding Conflicts for publicly-archived meetings (was Re: Conflict of Interest policy, 1 March 2012 draft)

[Steve Wills]

This certainly works for me. I was concerned that a person with material facts might get excluded in such a way that the proverbial baby went out with the bath water. As far an IRC goes, it is possible for a board to have a procedure which creates a "closed session" invite-only channel. This would technically solve the problem of a conflicted person hanging about during discussions that pertain to the area of conflict. I feel strongly that a person, irrespective of conflicts, should be available to answer questions as necessary. Especially if the conflicted person happens which to have a lot of undocumented institutional knowledge, something that is quite likely to occur in these small ad-hoc development communities.

Steve Wills
Evergreen-ILS Project

-----Original Message-----
From: Bradley M. Kuhn [mailto:bkuhn at sfconservancy.org]
Sent: Friday, March 2, 2012 02:32 PM
To: policies-discuss at sfconservancy.org
Subject: Participation in Discussions Regarding Conflicts for	publicly-archived meetings (was Re: Conflict of Interest policy,	1 March 2012 draft)

>> * *Participation in Discussions and Votes Regarding Conflicted Matter.*>> A conflicted PLC Person shall not participate in or be permitted>> to hear the PLC's or PLC sub-committee's discussion of the matter>> where he or she has a conflict of interest, except to disclose material>> facts and to respond to questions. The conflicted PLC Person shall>> not attempt to exert his or her personal influence with respect to>> the matter, either at or outside the meeting.Chris Leonard wrote at 21:42 (EST) on Thursday:> our PLC discussions are held in an open IRC forum and openness is a> philosophical position within our project. Can we narrow this> restriction for PLC members to "participate" while allowing "hearing"> on an equal footing with all project members?Tony and I came up with the following change which we think addresses thisissue: * *Participation in Discussions and Votes Regarding Conflicted Matter.* On a matter in which a PLC Person has a conflict of interest, the conflicted PLC Person must abstain from, and must not hear nor read the pre-vote discussions of the matter by the PLC or PLC sub-committee, except to disclose material facts and to respond to questions. The conflicted PLC Person shall not attempt to exert his or her personal influence with respect to the matter, either at or outside the meeting. The conflicted PLC Person may read minutes and/or logs of the matter's discussion after voting is complete.This change allows the conflicted PLC Person to "disclose material factsand to respond to questions", but does not allow them to actively otherwiseparticipate in discussions until a vote occurs.One thing we still want to prevent is the conflicted person being a fullparticipant at the meeting. For example, the conflicted person beingpresent in real-time at an IRC meeting then back-channeling to non-conflictedparties would defeat the purpose of the clause, so we didn't want tosoften so much as to allow that activity.Does this change address your concern?-- Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy_______________________________________________policies-discuss mailing listpolicies-discuss at sfconservancy.orghttp://lists.sfconservancy.org/mailman/listinfo/policies-discuss
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