The chairman and Sam could decide independently of anybody else. To gain something, you also have to give. It would not find the support of a larger community.
It’s the community foundation supported by KERI’s inventor Dr. Samuel M. Smith. Any qualified majority in the board makes decisions on all but a few topics. These topics are reserved for the technical manager with a few veto rights for the original inventor, which conforms to the well-established BDFL model.
Having stated this, we will always strive for consensus, but by all means, avoid takeovers or stalemates.
Thus, we wish to protect the original inventor’s work and future role. Furthermore, we wish to gradually develop the Foundation into a business-like, not-for-profit, open-source foundation where takeovers by narrow interest groups are impossible.
We can do this via:
A. Statutes and organizational regulations
B. Board composition
Ad A.
Statutes tend to be rigid. We create them, put them in a drawer, respect them, and only take them out when something happens. We will flexibly adjust the organization along the lines we lay out. We’ve used a standard Utah template, “Muli-Member L3C, Manager-Managed Organization Agreement”, for that.
And that’s where anyone donating and participating in the roles, tasks, and deliverables laid out has to trust what we do for the community.
Ad B.
See the organizational chart, the competence profiles, and the Memorandum of Understanding (Start 2025: status concept)
Who do you trust more to guide this process: the KERI team, including the original inventor, or some local interest group with an urgent agenda?
We aim for the more considerable support that we expect to be given to the proof of work team, the original KERI team.
History
Initially, the idea was to give all parties a voice and bring them together in one forum: the Advisory Board. The founders have reserved a seat on the board with decision-making authority for the leader of that Advisory Board.
This concession isn’t necessary for the current state of affairs, nor would it be the first choice to expand the board, but the founders expressed their appreciation by bundling advice in this board vote.
It constitutes the Best of Both Worlds: A small team can act fast and finish the work (5Ws). All stakeholders get a voice, and based on consensus in the advisory board, their chairman/leader has a seat with voting rights on the board of directors to represent the common interests of the stakeholders without slowing down the operations through endless discussions and individual interests.