On 20/06/2019 18:09, Simon Lees wrote:
As for the chairman position the board feels that while SUSE is the primary sponsor and is managing / maintaining all of SUSE's infrastructure etc having the chairman position as someone who can work between openSUSE and the community / board is a very valuable role, in addition to the current things that SUSE provides it is likely a foundation would need 1 to 2 people to deal with the admin / paperwork of running the foundation, rather then the foundation employing these people directly it would be far easier if SUSE were to employ such people on behalf of the foundation as they already have HR / payroll people etc which is another reason why keeping a strong link between SUSE and the board makes sense.
Certainly - I only suggested we elect such a person, instead of having her or him appointed. Not having a chairman at all is also an option - not uncommon in Foundations (I believe).
I think a strong case against this is that the chairman ends up reporting to someone reasonably high within SUSE so I think its fair they get to have a say, in a sense the current openSUSE chairman is not like most chairmen in most organisations, for example Richard isn't always the one chairing board meetings we tend to all work together maybe the word chairperson is wrong, given that there role is much less about chairing meetings and more about being the link between SUSE and the board, as such I think its reasonable for SUSE and the board to have the biggest say in there appointment, under the current scheme SUSE appoints the chairperson but if the board feels that the relationship between the chairperson and the rest of the board isn't working the board can formally ask SUSE for a replacement.
Sorry I missed something here, defining how a membership vote would work for chairperson would be kind of messy. The chairperson needs to be a SUSE employee and presumably they'd want to be on the board, so if the vote was at the same time if you were a SUSE employee running for chairman would you also be able to run for the general board at the same time, if not you'd risk people not running for chairperson because they want to be on the board and the chairman position might be a 1/4 chance where as general board might be 3/6 for example. Alternatively if they can run for the general board what happens if the members elect a chairperson who doesn't get elected to the board do you pick the person who ends up on the board with the highest number of votes for chairperson? Do you take only the first 2 board members elected instead of the first 3 and the third spot goes to the new chairman? If the community really wanted such a change we maybe able to do it but we'd have to consult with SUSE first we'd also have to come up with a solution which probably is possible but may not be all that clean but of all the options for a chairperson personally this is my least favorite but I am just one person. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org