Allow read-only members on foundation-board list

[Mark McLoughlin]

One of the things the Board's "Transparency Working Group" would like to do/investigate is opening up the foundation-board mailing list. See e.g. https://etherpad.openstack.org/TransparencyWG-Feb21-Agenda

What I think makes sense is:

  * move the existing foundation-board archives aside
  * allow anyone to join the list in read-only mode
  * only the existing members should be allowed to post
  * non-members can reply to foundation-board messages on the foundation list
  * the new foundation-board archives should be public

To make the list open and read-only to everyone, but read-write the existing members, we'd:

  * set the "Moderation" flag: http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/foundation-board/?VARHELP=privacy/sender/default_member_moderation
  * set behaviour for all moderated users to "Reject" in "Privacy options->Sender filters": http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/foundation-board/?VARHELP=privacy/sender/member_moderation_action
  * explain that moderated users should reply to the foundation list: http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/foundation-board/?VARHELP=privacy/sender/member_moderation_notice
  * change the welcome message to explain the moderation policy: http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/foundation-board/?VARHELP=general/welcome_msg
  * unset the mod bit for all existing members in "Membership management"

(thanks to Dave Neary for those suggestions here: http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation/2013-February/001329.html)

The main issue is what to do with the existing archives. The easiest thing would be if we could:

  * copy the current mailing list, its membership and archives to a new list e.g. 'foundation-board-old-archives'
  * hide this list from lists.openstack.org
  * existing board members can log in and review the old archives if they wish
  * remove the existing archives from the foundation-board list
  * maybe at some point we will clean confidential information from the old archives and re-instate them for the foundation-board list

openstack-infra folks - is this feasible? can anyone help with dealing with the existing archives or give me access to do that?

[Mark McLoughlin (markmc)]

To be clear - I don't think we're totally ready to pull the trigger on this yet, since I'd like to give board members and the transparency WG more chance to consider the proposal. Very interested to here whether folks think this is a feasible plan, though.

[Stefano Maffulli (smaffulli)]

Mark, these seem all good ideas and I agree about implementing them. I'm not sure I understand why we need to * copy the current mailing list, its membership and archives to a new list e.g. 'foundation-board-old-archives', though.

 I can easily give you access to the admin panel of the lists and to the machine itself to move the archives around. If you don't have time to do this, please help find a volunteer list manager (since we might use one :)).

[Mark McLoughlin (markmc)]

Thanks Stefano, I'm happy to figure out how to do this

The reason for copying the current list is that we want to open up the current list, but not open up the old archives ... yet we do want to keep the old archives and allow board members easily access them.

[Joshua McKenty (joshua-mckenty)]

Mark, given that this change will require board members to use an external document store for attachments (whether confidential or public), can we also set mailman to strip off attachments?

[Mark McLoughlin (markmc)]

This held up by the fact that the board wants to have a document repository in place for sharing confidential documents before opening up the board mailing list

I'm thinking we should create a new mailing list (e.g. <email address hidden>) which would be the "open and read-only to everyone, but read-write for directors" mailing list

The existing mailing list (<email address hidden>) would stick around unchanged as a way for directors to share confidential documents, but it would be shut down once we have a document store

We haven't discussed this at board level yet, so it's not something to move forward on yet

[Mark McLoughlin (markmc)]

I think the theory now is that the directors should use the <email address hidden> wherever possible. That doesn't seem to be happening all that much in practice, but there isn't much traffic on the <email address hidden> list either.

Our transparency policy states:

  www.openstack.org/legal/transparency-policy/

  2. General Policy Favoring Transparency.

  2.1 OpenStack favors disclosure and transparency to promote sharing and collaboration within the OpenStack community. This Policy will implement that strategy to assist in growing the ecosystem around OpenStack’s software, strengthening the platform and protecting the OpenStack brand. For these reasons, OpenStack adopts the following approach to information disclosure to the public under this Policy:
  ...
  (e) The general Board mailing list will be made available to the public for read-only subscription, but the Board may maintain a separate mailing list or document store to discuss confidential topics as defined below.

So I guess the thinking is that the foundation@ list is the "general board mailing list".

Closing this for now. If it appears directors are favoring the foundation-board@ list over the foundation@ list, then I think we could reconsider creating a new mailing list as "the general board mailing list".