Here's an explanation of the various roles of the GNOME Foundation Membership & Elections Committee.
Contents
Main roles
The committee has three main roles:
deciding if someone can be a member of the Foundation (according to the Membership Guidelines)
- maintaining the membership list
- organizing the elections for the Foundation Board held each June before GUADEC
The committee use the guidelines to decide if someone can be a member of the Foundation. It also follow the procedures (see Processing Applications) so we are sure that each applications is correctly processed. The committee's decisions should never be biased.
Maintaining the membership list is just a matter of adding new members and removing members whose membership has ended.
The committee organizes the elections for the Foundation Board. More information about this is available in Elections Howto. The committee should try to stay unbiased during the elections. Thus, a member of the committee should never enter an elections debate on behalf of the committee.
Other roles
The committee also play some other roles:
- sending renewal notices when members need to renew their membership
- organizing the referenda
- updating the Foundation website
administering the foundation-announce mailing list
The Foundation membership lasts two years. Members need to renew their membership by filling the form available on the Foundation website.
Organizing a referendum is no more difficult than organizing elections: most of the work is the same. See Elections Howto for more precisions.
The Foundation website does not need a lot of update, however the committee can be asked from time to time to update the content. Note that the Foundation Board and GNOME web hackers can also update the Foundation website. The committee should update the website for the Board elections or for a forthcoming referendum.
The committee administers the following mailing-lists:
foundation-announce: the committee subscribes new members to this list. It can also accept/deny post to this list.