> At least another 2/5 foundation board members have strong personal ties with New Vector Nope. Neither Ross, Jon or Jutta have 'strong personal ties' with NV

> At least another 2/5 foundation board members have strong personal ties with New Vector Nope. Neither Ross, Jon or Jutta have 'strong personal ties' with NV. We had met Ross twice(?) before asking him to join (based on his qualifications as a decentralisation-focused lawyer and casual Matrix user). Jutta we'd met once (and was asked based on her qualifications as CEO of a decentralisation-focused company which used Matrix). Jon had supervised me on an undergrad project 20 years ago (and not been in contact since), and was asked to join on the basis of his qualifications as an academic expert in decentralisation. We recruited experts to the board who we were familiar with from the industry, and have asked them to put their professional reputation on the line to ensure that Amandine & myself (as founders of Matrix, and later Element) keep the foundation on mission. > 7/8 spec team members are from New Vector. This is only because 3 of the 8 were independent when they joined the team, but subsequently ended up working at NV so they could be paid to work on the Matrix core team as their day job. When performing their SCT duties they do so as independent individuals rather than Element employees, and do a great job of separating the two. > If New Vector does not like a competitor, they can block them from participating in the standard (making new features of them standards non-compliant) and then block them from using the Matrix brand or claiming to be Matrix compatible. If that happened, the Guardians (and in future the Governing Board) would step in to fix the abuse. It's a checks & balances system. > That should be enough for a full-time hire with competitive compensation for a few years, especially if that hire is not in California (why the hack hire in California when you don't need to?) I am very glad that the Foundation hired a world-class Managing Director in the form of Josh, precisely to address the issues you've been highlighting, with a pretty much unique history and qualifications for managing non-profit open source foundations. That's why the hack we hired in California :)