On 2012-01-25 16:11:48 (-0600), Bryen M Yunashko <suserocks@bryen.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2012-01-25 at 16:43 -0500, Robert Schweikert wrote:
During today's project meeting a discussion about openSUSE membership started, see earlier posts to the list for meeting minutes.
While we have documented procedures (http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members) on how to become a member, we do not have any guidelines about what it means to be a member in good standing. Additionally, the only way to get pruned from the list of members is to repeatedly violate the guiding principals or actively request removal.
I am suggesting that the conditions for loss of membership are not sufficient. As briefly discussed in the meeting today we have about 500 or so members. Also in a recent meeting it was suggested that we have a large contingent of non active members. This would then explain why we end up with only 200 and some odd votes of 500 members for the board elections.
I think one thing we do need to be concerned about is that in the beginning, we often stated there is no expiration for membership. While I think, upon reflection, we should have set expiration dates, we do need to recognize that expectation existed when many of our members became members.
That raises whether we should willingly redefine existing memberships or grandfather them in and only set expirations on new memberships.
I disagree (kinda), that sounds very bureaucratic. From an engineering point of view: we tried something, started with a proposition, a first idea. Then we have noticed that it doesn't work as well as it should (supposing here that most agree with Robert's proposal -- if not, then this discussion is moot :)). So we fix it. Why can't it be that simple? Because a for "membership 1.0" we said that there would be no expiration? Would anyone sue us? I mean, if that would be the reason for not improving it, then I personally believe we'd just be standing in our own way.
As probably anyone who is a member of some club or association knows, there is always some condition, often a fee, that assures continued membership in said club or association. No I am NOT proposing a membership fee for openSUSE. However, I am proposing that we come up with a mechanism to prune our list of members and that there is no such thing as a "free" (as in I don't contribute) life time membership.
I do agree we need to do *some* pruning because it lends credibility to our membership. "500 members, WOW!" becomes meaningless if it is seen as inactive. However, I'd like to suggest we also consider approaching these members who are inactive and see if we can coax them to come back into the fold. This is definitely more work, but we should actively engage rather than a simple form "Do you wanna stick around or not?" which seems so impersonal.
In a perfect world, yes. Would anyone have time to do that? If so, then yes, sure, it would be highly interesting to hear why people who have been active are not any more. I suspect personal reasons (time, family, another job, etc...) to be the most prominent set, but still, there might be a few concerns and disappointments etc... we should at least hear about. But if there aren't 1, 2, 3 people who stand up for it and own the task, an automated email is still better than nothing at all.
Definitely we'll lose at least *some* inactive members and that's fine.
We will lose 100% of them. No, we already "lost" 100% of the inactive members. They are not active any more, period :) "Hey, do you want to get back to contribute to the project ?" when, for most (which is what I would assume, but only reality will tell), they simply don't have enough time any more, well that won't change a thing.
But we really should consider outreach as the very point of membership is to celebrate contributions which is the core of what makes a project successful. If they contributed once before, then they obviously have the tools to contribute again. Thus are low-hanging fruit for jump-starting again.
I think that's overly optimistic, but if someone has the time, sure, we should at the very least try.
I propose the following guideline: " On even years of membership anniversary (that would be year 2, 4, 6...) a member gets an automated e-mail. - If the e-mail bounces and there is no other means to contact the person than the person is removed as a member. - If the person does not respond within two weeks, another e-mail is sent. If after 2 additional weeks no response is received the person is removed as a member.
The way its done at GNOME is to reach out to those who have expiring memberships about 2-3 months in advance. I think 2 week turnaround time is just too conservative given the nature of open source participation. There are valid reasons why someone may not be checking their email for a month or so.
Agreed, a month would be more appropriate. Also, most of them have been inactive for over a year, and 2 weeks won't change anything ;)
A response to the received e-mail should include a short list of areas in the project where the member was active during the past two years. This can be verified by the membership team. With the response and verification membership continues. "
I would like to propose that we allow a *waiver* period. Meaning, you are allowed one period of inactivity, as long as you say you still wish to be a member. E.g., you've been active, but you were not active in the last membership period. That's okay. But if the second membership expiration period comes up and you're still seen as inactive, then you get the disqualification. Again, reason for this is because of external extenuating circumstances. I've seen a lot of people who were highly active then go quiet for a period of time (due to family illnesses or stopping to focus on their Uni studies, or etc.) This scenario is just simply not that uncommon and why penalize someone who contributed for 5+ years who needed to take a temporary break from giving his free time to the community? I just feel that if you've contributed significantly in the past, you deserve to have one waiver period. Out of fairness. And it shows we still care and want them to come back when it is possible for them.
Sounds quite complicated. As an alternative: - keep a list of former members somewhere, because we still value the contributions they made in the past - when they contribute again, they can simply re-apply for membership
I realize I am proposing more work for the membership committee, sorry. However, I would hope that this is not too much of a burden. With maybe 300 or fewer active members there would be on average less than 1 verification e-mail per day sent. In addition this is spread out based on anniversary date of membership, thus the additional verification should be small.
Currently, the membership committee's function is simply to review and process membership applications. If we make any kind of change that reflects membership expiry periods, then there will be some technical considerations that have to be made, including setting up a database that will maintain current membership qualification statuses.
Why? We only need to have the date at which their membership was granted (I hope that's in the database...). [...] cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green _\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf