[ZF] Zope Foundation launch plan

[Rob Page]

Hello everyone:

We are beginning to prepare for the Zope Foundation
opening operations.  Below we're laying out a plan for
bootstrapping the organization.  Comments solicited.

This document uses words like "will", "shall", "should"
etc not to presume that this plan is final but to
eliminate confusion about intent.

In chronological order:

o ZC will incorporate the Zope Foundation (ZF) with a
   bootstrap Board of Directors (BoD) consisting of Rob
   Page (me).

o Final docs are being reviewed by the Software Freedom
   Law Center.  When these are finished we will post
   them on zope.org for final review.

o While these docs are out for review (~ 10 days) we
   will develop the list of Committers that will be
   automatically invited to participate in the ZF as ZF
   Committer and will begin the process of establishing
   new Committer agreements.

o At the close of the community review period
   (presuming no comments on any changes) the ZF
   Bootstrap BoD (BootBoD) will adopt the updated ZPL IP
   policy and, Committer Agreement and votes to open the
   ZF for business

o the ZF BootBoD will open a business bank account in
   Virginia

o the BootBoD will also open the ZF up to Strategic
   Developer Members, Strategic Consumer Members,
   Solution Provider Members and Associate Members.  We
   will enroll these members and collect appropriate
   dues.

o we will allow a month for the migration of pre-ZF
   Committers to ZF Committers.  Note that this does NOT
   mean that we will close any doors after this month.
   Rather, that, in an attempt to get things rolling, we
   will hold elections based on the Membership as of the
   end of that month.

o at the end of this month elections will be held to
   elect Directors to the first elected Board of
   Directors (BoD).  See note below re: election
   mechanics

o the BoD will be seated and begin the normal business
   of the ZF

o We expect that BoD voting activity will be conducted
   using GPG-signed communications - we will need to
   develop a mechanism for securely (reasonable)
   collecting BoD GPG keys

Election Mechanics
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Background: The ZF *must* have electronic voting in
order to scale.  There are many candidate approaches.
The approach described below recognizes several things:

     o Committers represent the largest audience of ZF
       voters

     o we have a preexisting requirement to have ssh
       keys for all Committers

     o Using ssh is not for the completely non-technical
       person but is approachable from many in the Zope
       community.

     o we're not guarding nuclear secrets so "reasonable
       and accomplishable" security is sufficient.

Proposal: Copy ssh keys from svn to a periodically
           available host (e.g., elections.zope.org)
           that uses key authentication only.  Replace
           the shell with a simple voting application
           (e.g., curses python app).  Voting
           application captures the vote and emails the
           voter.

Known Issues: for the totally non-technial user using
               ssh and a curses application might be
               challenging.

--
Rob Page               V: 540 361 1710
Zope Corporation       F: 703 995 0412




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