Now that the thread has a finite lifetime, I feel comfortable sharing my read and suggestion.
The Foundation and Board are not set up in order to dictate the direction of the project, but to empower the community to make decisions on the direction of the project, while handling administrative, legal, and financial issues in that role. (I’m taking this from my read of this .) However, there is an unavoidable interface, sometimes blurred, between empowerment and leadership; for example, organizing a collective direction of a diverse community necessarily involves imposing some limits and guidelines in order to reach an objective, such as creating deadlines, processes, and policies.
This thread has provided a lot of information and context on what the posters care about and why, which is useful and important. However, it doesn’t necessarily point to how the board / foundation should use that information to create policy, because that needs to be a judgment call that will probably not satisfy everyone. Which is ok, and unavoidable.
My suggestion to the board is probably unnecessary, I believe they are cognizant of their role and will be going about it as SCALE winds down and maybe they recover some energy. I would say, draft a policy and put it out there, see how the community responds. (Like I said, unnecessary, but here for completeness.)
My suggestion to the community is to respect the board and foundation’s roles, and what their roles entail, and do not entail. It may seem through silence or lack of full-throated support of a deeply-held belief, that they are in opposition to said belief – that is the way deeply held beliefs usually feel. But I believe they are acting as the role requires, to empower the community, a diverse community of deeply held beliefs, to move forward.