[FFmpeg-devel] FFmpeg, FFMtech Foundation and donations

[Michael Niedermayer]

Hi

The foundation had 7 directors. 4 of which in january joined the
libav.org fork. The foundation thus had a narrow majority of libav
supporters.

on 19 Mar 2011,  6 directors where meeting on IRC and discussing how
the next board of directors should be elected, they decided that
"People who had svn accounts and were active in the last year are
allowed to vote, in case of contention the board can decide."


on 25 May, ben suggests that
"those who are eligible to vote are allowed to cast 3 votes for
those who they prefer to be on the board"


On the 8th Jun The election is announced to begin the next day with
the number of votes raised to 7 from 3 and the people allowed to
vote extended to include several
libav developers who where neither active nor had svn write accounts

http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmtech-board-election/2011-June/000001.html
(the list of people allowed to vote is ATM AFAIK non public, all
 directors have seen it though)


Still on the 8th i suggest to vote between having 7 and 9 directors
this was rejected by the 4 libav affiliated directors. 

On the 9th i resign as director

-----------------

The things above gave me the distinct feeling something was wrong but
it took me a bit to find out what exactly. To me it seems that
4 directors repeatly violated their "duty to disclose a conflict
of interrest" Article 3.1 of the foundations conflicts policy.

The conflict of interrest exists because they are members of the
libav project and have financial interrest in the libav project to
be supported by the foundation. The libav project (compared to ffmpeg)
is not the target project for the foundation to support.
The documents of the foundation quite clearly state ffmpeg in them.

They also did not act in the best interrests of ffmtech which they
should. The best interrest certainly is to provide consistency and
stability to ffmtechs donators and not push toward retargeting the
foundation to their project.

Considering that the current people allowed to vote where selected by
libav.org affiliated directors. Who had a conflict of interrest to make
such a decission. Iam unusure what this means for the vote.
Also the change of 3 to 7 votes was not voted on amongth the directors.

--
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Why not whip the teacher when the pupil misbehaves? -- Diogenes of Sinope
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