Affiliations of Members of the R-multiverse Management Committee

[shikokuchuo]

The affiliations of all administrators is recorded for the purposes of this part of the Governance Document at https://r-multiverse.org/governance.html

R-Multiverse is non-commercial but commercially-aware

We invite third parties, including for-profit corporations, to contribute to R-Multiverse and use it for their own purposes.

However it is important for the longevity and community health of R-Multiverse that the community be recognised as the primary contributor to the project and that the project continues to serve all members of the community equally.

The RMC actively track the corporate affiliations of administrators and moderators, and strives to ensure influence around any particular aspect of the project is not overly skewed towards a single corporate entity.

This may be amended at any time by any of the administrators.

(in alphabetical order)

1. Charlie Gao (Hibiki AI Limited, contractor for Posit Software, PBC)
2. William Landau (Eli Lilly and Company)
3. Jeroen Ooms (rOpenSci, contractor for Posit Software, PBC)
4. Maëlle Salmon (contractor for rOpenSci and cynkra GmbH)

@jeroen @maelle @wlandau

[wlandau]

According to our governance document, we also track moderator affiliations. @eitsupi, would you be willing to share yours?

[eitsupi]

@llrs Thanks. Of course, I do not consider your comments to be in any way binding.

you could ask them (your boss/manager?) if they are okay with this.

Please note that I am not here to consult with you on how to convince my bosses.
And, what if the bosses prohibits me from using the company's name in my hobby activities?

For me, the situation of having to ask the company about my hobby activities is very unpleasant and has the potential to cause problems and should be avoided.

If you do not accept my opinion, you can remove me from the moderator list at any time.

[shikokuchuo]

@eitsupi please accept my apologies. Your position is clear and reasonable and I don't think anyone here wishes to force the issue. This is probably something we will need to take up internally and clarify in our governance docs.

[llrs]

In the past I also didn't like that my employer which did nothing for my community service get credited (or associated with) my community contributions. When shared, a couple of times, I had to make clear that I was not speaking for my employer or representing them in any way. I am not trying to convince you to talk to anyone.

As a member of a code of conductor committee for the last two years I have learnt that the resolution of incidents might depend on this kind of information, either so that members of the committee recuse themselves or because the path for resolution with third parties depends on knowing their affiliation, obligations and resources available on them.

Maybe the governance could distinguish those that contribute to r-multiverse as part of their employment and those that do not.
But per the above experience, I think that the main employer (if any) of the people on the team should be disclosed.

I hope this helps the team to make a decision. Good luck!

[eitsupi]

@shikokuchuo Thank you. However, no apology is necessary. I was just clarifying my position.

On a related note, even Apache Arrow, an ASF participant with fairly strict governance, seems to have people with - or None affiliations.
https://github.com/apache/arrow-site/blob/df33150cc27f0da4ec6cbe0f62de2b53021662cf/_data/committers.yml

[wlandau]

From my point of view, I think a "none" affiliation is reasonable (the precedent from Apache is useful) and arguably falls within the current governance. The main requirement is to respect whatever the moderator's employer requires. In some cases, a company's non-disclosure agreement does not allow employees to have "personal hobbies" that use the skills they were hired for. In other cases, an employee might not be allowed to represent their company. I think moderators should be allowed to choose either, depending on their situation.

In cases that could go either way, I would prefer affiliations to be disclosed for transparency's sake.

In the past I also didn't like that my employer which did nothing for my community service get credited (or associated with) my community contributions.

I have come to appreciate the extra layer of legal protection that a company can provide if it is the official owner listed in the license files of my packages. (Fortunately, this extra layer has never been tested in my case.)

[wlandau]

Would it be better to track affiliations at https://r-multiverse.org/team.html rather than this discussion thread? https://r-multiverse.org/team.html is not a formal policy and thus is free to change as quickly as it needs to.

[wlandau]

The draft documentation for moderators proposes to track applicable affiliations at https://r-multiverse.org/team.html, which is what we currently do. I think we have resolved this discussion thread, and propose closing it.