[Linux-aus] Brendan's research grant?

[Melissa Draper]

On Sat, 2010-03-06 at 10:20 +1100, Mike Carden wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Melissa Draper <melissa at meldraweb.com> wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > Is it possible to know why we are finding out via Sam Varghese [0]
> > (rather than transparently via Linux Australia's communication channels)
> 
> Yes. It's probably a mistake and I accept responsibility for it.
> Here's what happened.
> 
> The council discussed Brendan's proposals back in January as one of
> the pieces of unfinished business handed on by the previous council.
> We couldn't reach a decision on the merit of the proposals so we
> decided to seek further external advice.
> 
> At this week's meeting we discussed the issue again in the light of
> that advice and decided that if Brendan would agree to make his report
> completely public, we would proceed with the first of his proposals
> and evaluate the possibility of the second in light of the output of
> the first.
> 
> I then contacted Brendan and he agreed to proceed on that basis.
> Coincidentally he had blogged on the issue the night before and in the
> wake of our exchange decided to update his blog post to reflect our
> decision to proceed. From the blog post, Sam Varghese picked up the
> story.
> 
> Meanwhile, I emailed the committee list to say that Brendan had agreed
> and we were going ahead. What I possibly should have done at that
> point was to email the member list to say the same thing. Being
> inexperienced in the usual way that these things might be done, I
> failed to do so.
> 
> For that, I apologise.

Thank You for the sincere apology, Mike. Your honesty is appreciated.

I don't believe that you're entirely at fault here, however.

James (who is explicitly quoted by Sam) has dealt with the grants
process before -- as grants czar -- in his previous stint on the
Council. I honestly believe that given this, and the mistakes we (I
shared the role with him in 2008) learned from regarding communication
of grants, he should have known to ensure that the general membership
was notified before speaking to Sam.

I really /really/ */really/* don't want to have to read ITWire, period,
let alone to have it be bestowed exclusives over our own mailing list.

-- 
Melissa Draper

w: http://meldraweb.com & http://geekosophical.net