What prevents organizational capture of the foundation?

[ashleygwilliams]

We have endeavored to construct the Foundation such that there are a plurality of voices on the board and those voices have power.

Unlike many software foundation boards, the project itself will appoint a significant number of directors to the board to sit alongside the corporate directors, as we mentioned in the answer to “Will Rust maintainers have a voice in the foundation?”.

Additionally, the board is structured in a way that has limits on the power that any one particular entity can have. While the bylaws are still in draft, they contain several rules to prevent organizational capture, for example:

• Limits to the number of directors that can be employed by a single entity
• Limits to the number of votes an entity has, if it there are multiple legal subsidiaries represented on the board
• Quorum and voting decisions requiring majorities from both project directors and corporate directors

We weren’t entirely sure that this is what you meant by organizational capture. If this doesn’t address your concerns, please follow up by filing a new more detailed question!

[yaahc]

We weren’t entirely sure that this is what you meant by organizational capture.

I think you got the gist of it. I was also wondering about the communities ability to hold board members accountable but that seems to have been answered in https://github.com/rust-lang/foundation-faq-2020/issues/41