[Members] job changes and organizational affiliations

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Last night, Dave Cridland noted that he will be joining Surevine. Back 
in January, both Philipp Hancke and I noted that we were joining &yet. 
XSF members might wonder why certain people post such messages.

In my opinion it is most appropriate for those who serve on the XSF 
Board of Directors (like Dave), the XMPP Council (like Philipp), or in 
other roles like the Executive Director (me) to post such messages. The 
purpose is to let the other members know about the potential for bias 
and conflicts of interest.

That said, in my experience within the XSF and the IETF (specifically 
while serving on the IESG [1]) I have not seen problems with having two 
or more people who are currently affiliated with the same organization 
also serve in similar community roles. I'm not saying it can't happen, 
but in practice I have not seen it. The IETF saying that "we all 
participate as individuals" might sound naive, but in technical matters 
I think it's true. When both Matt Miller and worked at Jabber Inc. and 
then Cisco, we didn't always agree about XEPs or Internet-Drafts we were 
working on. Just because I have left Cisco and now work with Lance and 
Philipp at &yet doesn't mean the three of us are suddenly in lockstep 
about technical issues. And people who are employed by Cisco are 
notorious about using the IETF as a way to hammer out technical issues 
they can't agree on internally.

Naturally, XSF members might want to take organizational affiliations 
into account when deciding who they want to choose for the Board and the 
Council. However, in my opinion it is more important to choose people 
with a wide range of knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience than 
to focus primarily on organizational affiliation. Your opinions might 
differ, of course. :-)

Peter

[1] http://www.ietf.org/iesg/