COI: Competitive Bids on Developer Contracts (was Re: Conflict of Interest policy, 1 March 2012 draft)

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

[ I'm making some effort to split issues out into separate subject
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>>> ** *Conservancy Retains Right to Request Competitive Bids.*

> On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 9:41 PM, Ian Lynagh <igloo at earth.li> wrote:
>> In the (unlikely, I hope!) event that the PLC disagrees with the
>> Conservancy on the competency of an alternative candidate, the PLC
>> can choose not to go ahead with the project, I assume?

Chris Leonard wrote at 22:04 (EST) on Thursday:

> My take is that for reasons of satisfying IRS requirements of
> possessing overall "control" over the actions of the SFC and member
> projects that language like this is necessary, but does not represent
> any intent on the part of the SFC to arbitrarily insert itself in
> technical execution of projects.

Quite correct.  Conservancy itself is ultimately responsible to the IRS
for how the money is spent.  If the money is spent in a way to give
private benefit to an individual, it's Conservancy Directors' and
Officers' who will be accountable to the IRS.

As such, Conservancy has to retain the right to seek competitive bids or
otherwise assure itself that Conservancy is getting the best possible
deal.

In reality, not all competitive bids will be believable (that "really
cheap" bid from a 1-year-experience VisualBasic developer to work on a
complex Python system isn't going to be taken seriously by anyone).

Also, I think that Ian's assessment is correct: if we got down to a
serious dispute between Conservancy and the Project Leadership about
whether the work should be done by a specific individual, then the
likely outcome would be "the work doesn't happen".  I can also imagine
it might be a catalyst for the project wanting to leave Conservancy,
which would be understandable as well.


Ian, is there some specific change you think would help address this?  I
feel like what I said above is ultimately implied: the FSA's themselves
say that projects can leave, and the brinkmanship option is always there
for disputes regardless of what the COI policy says.  Nevertheless, if
there's language we could add to this section to deal with that, I'm
open to it.
-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy