Last week I had a meeting with my local Cooperative Development Agency(CDA), I talked to them about the situation that Puppy now finds itself in and they offered some interesting ideas and useful advise.
The Cooperative movement was established some 150 years ago and has become internationally recognised as an
Essentially a Cooperative offers a set of rules and best practices that promote and ensure the fair and effective democratic organisation of groups of people. They provide a set of unalterable Primary Rules and the means for members to create and maintain a set of Secondary Rules. For instance, one of the Primary Rules is that meetings must be pre-arranged on a set date and be advertised to all members. An example of a Secondary Rule is that Puppy Linux, as a policy, will not use proprietary code in any of its releases. Secondary Rules can also be used to organise the community, for instance, what a majority margin should be when voting, eg 75%.autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise
The Benefits
I am very much in favour of Puppy taking this kind of route in the future, I certainly think there are drawbacks but on the whole I think these are significantly outweighed by the benefits. Allow me to briefly outline my thoughts on this:
Firstly, as it is said, 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts', therefore, that when working together towards a common goal, more can be achieved than by that same number of people undergoing the same amount of effort when heading in different directions. However, in order to have a common goal there must be agreement as to what that goal is, fundamentally this involves communication and compromise.
For me communication is key here, it needs to be sincerely and patiently encouraged to the point that everyone feels they can have their opinions heard in a supportive, unbiased and constructive environment. And quite simply this is achieved by asserting and maintaining clear boundaries and rules. If expressed constructively and in an attitude of mutual exploration all opinions are valid and significant. This is an example of how rules actually nurture creativity rather than suppress it. The more respect there are for these rules the stronger and more effective they will be.
Which is where the use of an existing model comes in. Rather than try and muddle along and make something up from scratch, why not appeal to methods that have been tried and tested by millions of others over hundreds of years. Personally I am in favour of not trying to find a single person to exactly replace the role of Barry Kauler, I just simply think there cannot possibly be such a person. However, that does leave us with the problem of, to whom do we refer absolute authority? So my answer to this would be to the authority of a tried, tested and proven pre-existing model for democratic organisation. We all have our own opinions about how things should be done, but none of us can compare in expereince nor knowledge to the time-earned wisdom of something like the Cooperative model.
I also feel that aligning ourselves to such a universally recognised and respected set of established principles would provide Puppy with a healthy helping of dignity and kudos. It would likely inspire more people to become involved, especially in terms of those rarer specialists, experts and sponsors.
The Nitty Gritty Details
So, back to the CDA, the CDA is a government funded agency to freely provide advice and assistance to Cooperative startups (the link at the top is just to my local one, there's one in every county here in the UK). I met with two advisers, both of whom were welcoming, patient and genuinely interested in what's happening here at Puppy. We covered a lot of ground, primarily exploring the feasibility of international on-line Cooperatives, for which there are few precedents; though it quickly became apparent that there were not actually any serious obstacles.
Limited liability
What did emerge though was the distinction between an incorporation and unincorporated association (yes it was quite new to me too!). Basically this is to do with something called limited liability. As an incorporation Puppy would exist as a 'person' in its own right, so that Puppy, and not any of its members, would be liable (therefore responsible) for any legal responsibilities. For instance, it seems that Barry is willing to retain ownership of the intellectual property of Puppy, therefore the name, logo, etc. However, if this wasn't the case then Puppy, as an incorporated body, could 'own' these things. The advantage of all this is that only Puppy could ever be responsible, in a legal sense, for itself and that none of its members could ever be taken to court or some such.
Unincorporated Associations
That's all pretty serious stuff and in the meeting, it was suggested that unless there are huge amounts of money involved then incorporation is not worth the extra hassle. However, the other option, unincorporated associations, does not protect members from liability. Now, we're getting into pretty hypothetical territory here, I mean what trouble could Puppy and the community seriously expect to get into to? I know it's a big question and one that most of us tinkerers and hobbyist would rather not have to think about! But it's a big world out there and the operating system sector has one of the biggest players in history throwing its greedy weight around. If we're serious about taking Puppy forward then we're caught between a rock and a hard place; we can't make Puppy better and not expect it to become a more prominent feature (and therefore competitor) on the technological map.
But of course we're not there yet! There's absolutely no rush. As we discussed, it is perfectly possible to evolve from an unincorporated association into a limited liability incorporation at some date in the future, if that was deemed necessary by the community -- because then we'll be able to have a proper vote about it!
And if nothing else, what all this very usefully highlights is the rather sober reality that we can't have our cake and eat it. Growth involves change. And of course change involves the possibility of changing something that works into something that doesn't work -- that's an unavoidable fact. Without Barry in his current role something fundamental changes in Puppy, we, as the community, are left to deal with things that we never had to deal with before. And in reflecting on these seemingly serious and un-Puppy issues we get a flavour of some of those things that Barry has, up until now, provided a measure of protection from.
Where to Begin
Which ever way we go, the Cooperative rules will be underlying. One of these rules is that there needs to be at lest two founding members and that they need to formally sign their names to these rules in order to be considered members. The CDA has said they'll provide a copy of these initial rules (some of which can be changed using the Secondary Rules system) for us to consider and discuss. They are very happy to help us out in whatever way they can, even if we decide not to become a Cooperative.
Good Luck Puppy!