We, the Board, have a collective responsibility to the Project, and we, the Board, should do a good job of detailing what we, the Board thought about any decision we made on behalf of the Project.
But it should be _we_, the Board, not Richard, Ana, Gertjan, Sarah, Christian, and Simon as individuals. We need to work together as a team.
So that description of the two "logics" in the minutes would not include the names people who follow it because you think it is not team-work if one of that individuals has a different _public_ opinion while supporting the decision of the majority?
Yes, it would not include the names of either the people agreeing nor disagreeing with the final decision of the Board
Isn't that the definition of team, supporting each other even in case of hard times (like disagreement)? I, as a non board member, wouldn't conceive hiding this as anything other than obfuscation of facts. And weak team behavior.
And what about the teamwork between the board and the rest of the community? Aren't we also a team? Or are we outside, not to be trusted to understand and differentiate between you as individuals and the majorities you form?
The Board should only be making decisions when there are complex factors with nuance and discretion, with details which we cannot share publicly. So yes, I do not expect the community at large to be able to understand and differentiate in such circumstances. They will not be equipped with all of the information to do so. So they'll be judging the decisions of the individuals with half the information available. And if we could share all of the details with the Project in the first place, then I continue to argue that the Board shouldn't be deciding in those cases, so the question as to whether or not the votes should be public are somewhat defunct. As an aside - I'd like to point out that so far all votes by the openSUSE membership has been private, and great care has been taken to ensure that this is always the case and we only use tools that support that workflow. Are you advocating for making any and all Membership votes also public? In Board elections are Board members not to be trusted we knowing who voted for us? Shouldn't other Members know who voted for whom? In other elections are our fellow Members not to be trusted in knowing who voted for the latest guiding principles and such? To quote Men in Black "A person is smart. People are dumb and panicky [...] and you know it".
This is especially important because of the nature of the decisions we make often being ugly ones.
Ugly decisions, like you have described canceling membership or conflict resolution, often need a different approach for sure. Some situations call for unanimous and swift decisions that leave little room for debate. Everybody is aware of that I guess.
What I really don't understand, help me out please, is what stops you from deploying the appropriate individual measure to two complete different problems? Canceling membership versus voting on sponsorship for a football team. Why can't you come out with force in the former and explain to the rest of us what's going on to the fullest extent in the latter?
Because, like I have illuded to, I do not feel comfortable about sharing all of the details of a situation which was escalated to the Board privately by others elsewhere in the Project, and so I'm treating the details of that request with the same discretion as I treat the other discreet requests made of the Board. We always minute as much as we can, but I'd be uncomfortable betraying the trust of the escalating contributor by sharing all of the details without agreeing with them first. Or to put it another way - given the typical purposes of the Board, I think it makes sense for the default setting to be discretion and privacy. If there are cases where the Board is dealing with something that could be dealt with with the kind of openness you're advocating, then I would argue that is something that shouldn't be discussed at the Board level and instead should be discussed in an open venue, like this or any other openSUSE mailinglist.
Now to construct an even more evil situation. What measure would you deploy if you cancel a membership when you are the only one voting for it (with your veto) or a 50:50 split of votes?
We've had a 50:50 split of votes on such debates before - these decisions remained deadlocked until a clearer majority developed. It wasn't pretty, but there is no comfortable option in a Board of 6 people with each member having an equal vote. I have never executed my power of veto. I would expect any execution of my veto to by VERY clearly minuted. As Chairman I expect absolutely zero privacy for any such cases. In a case of the Chairman's veto overruling the majority of the Board, I would expect (and strongly encourage) that the Board use their power to request SUSE replace me as Chairman.
Which are the recent decisions you think you should have pushed back? How many percent do you guess would get off your plate?
https://en.opensuse.org/Archive:Board_meeting_2018-06-05 [...]
Thank you for the list of things, it really helps to understand your point. I agree that most of these should not be concerns of the board. The question is why are they and why do people think they should be?
I have a few speculative theories. Because people have gotten into the habit of emailing board@opensuse.org instead of opensuse-project@opensuse.org? Because Board members are human and have developed the habit of raising their bright ideas in the context of Board meetings instead of opensuse-project@opensuse.org instead of other lists? It's a double edged sword - I think it's a good thing we've got active Boards full of inspired and inspiring individuals, it does help get the jobs done the Board is meant to do. But the Board has always been documented in a way that made obvious that there is a risk of overreaching it's scope and in doing so risks impeding individuals from the Project to drive things forward in the way they should be able to. I'm quite happy for this debate because at the very least it gives any brave soul who's read this far a chance to consider the views on this topic, and wherever they may lie on the spectrum of feeling on the topic, if they feel something, I think the Project will benefit.
And another thought, don't you think that defining the boards body of work so narrow on conflict resolution would take something away from the project?
Conflict resolution has most certainly been the primary topic of the majority of Board meetings since the last election, yes.
I guess there is no debate about that. Does it have to be though?
There is no one else to deal with conflict resolution, and similar discreet escalations, but there are other people (the community-at-large) to deal with other stuff. Given that, and taking into account our shared view that if we look at most recent examples of what is put on the Board's plate that "should not be concerns of the Board" then I think yes, it should be that way. The Board should limit itself to just doing stuff which no one else can do. For everything else, there's Mastercard..um.. I mean the mailinglists, forums, IRC, discord, etc, and the thousands of contributors who inhabit the Project on those platforms. Though I'm open to any suggestions of what you think the Board should be doing besides dealing with such escalations - hey, that's why we publish the minutes! :)
Project which rises or falls on the _actions_ of our contributors, not the _decisions_ of our Board
Au contraire. We rise and fall on the _actions_ of all contributors, _including_ the board :-)
Touche ;) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org