But why not let non-members read about the useful work the foundation is doing rather than restricting read access and adding fuel to the fire about non-transparency, an insider cabal etc.
Because Foundation members posting on the forum may not want the entire world to know that they are Foundation members with a quick Google search-- there is a privacy issue.Somebody could sign up as a member and then try to screen-scrape and republish everything somewhere, so members should assume that whatever they say will eventually be public. And the membership might still decide that read-only for non-members is the right thing to do-- I agree that it could be a good way to attract new members, if the quality of conversation is high.
In related news: Foundation board members will be blogging regularly at https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/
(RSS feed: https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?feed=rss )