Charlie: I have no doubt that you're a good guy and you mean well.
My top 3 concerns/solutions:
- Lack of board representation for the privacy-focused sociopolitical viewpoint. Currently, business interests far outweigh privacy interests on the Foundation's board. Matonis is outnumbered. The addition of a nonprofit political Bitcoin advocate like Falkvinge or Björnsdóttir would address this.
- Lack of board representation for international viewpoints. Currently the whole thing seems very USA-centric. Same solution as above.
- Danger in a financial dependency relationship between dev group and foundation. A direct compensation arrangement leaves the dev group susceptible to future pressure and influence through the foundation. It would be much better if the foundation created an independent salary/donation mechanism where the community was allowed to donate to the development budget first, and the foundation donated on top of that only in case of a shortfall. Basically make the payment process as decentralized and autonomous as possible.
Anything you can do to address these would be appreciated. Thank you for listening.
Thank you for your confidence (and to the others as well). As one of the representatives of the Individual Membership Class, I take my board responsibilities very seriously. When Zimmermann resigned from Network Associates because they were trying to backdoor PGP, I took him in at Hushmail as Chief Cryptographer which is when OpenPGP was launched (2000-2002).
Regarding your 3rd concern above, how do you respond to the points that I make in this reply to theymos
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113400.msg1227798#msg1227798 ?
I recognize the potential financial dependency issue, but how does your proposal mitigate clandestine, non-transparent compensation from malicious actors and how does it address succession planning for lead developers?