On 12/9/20 11:43 PM, Adrien Glauser wrote:
Not taking sides, but from a 10'000 foot view are the following statements true? 1. As of now there is no written Rule anywhere in the "normative" body of openSUSE that says what Board folks or former Board folks can say about a candidate on public platforms during an electoral period. Both groups are treated like normal folks even though they are incommensurably more influential than any single individual who doesn't belong to this categories. 2. Usually it's good to provide rules like that. This makes electoral period fairer to all parties involved, and fosters candidates <-> members communication. 3. If such a rule had been there, probably Mark's resignation would have been prevented, and usually things won't be so messy with oS governance.
I'd welcome a draft for such a rule, however as someone who is on the board but not running in this election I have found it valuable to ask questions of all candidates around foundations to help clarify there responses and have found there answers very valuable. Last year when I was a candidate I intentionally chose not to ask other candidates questions because I didn't think it was appropriate. Past board members are the only people with actual experience being on the board which I think can leave them in a valuable place for asking questions.
Speaking of messy, I've flipped through both the Election Rules and the Board Rules and honesty I think they could use a serious revamp. Not in their contents, but in their wording. For example it's not straightforward to deduce the exact number of seats at stakes in the upcoming election from just the February 2020 election results in conjunction with the Rules. (I can explain why if you're interested).
This is understandable, Following the Board Election Rules Vinz should have only had a 1 year term as he was appointed, however given he was the clear next candidate and was being appointed right after the election the board decided to use our 2/3rds power to temporarily amend the election rules and give Vinz a 2 year term. More broadly the first plan we have is to merge all our governance rules into one "Constitution" document. From there it will be easier to propose changes, at the moment we have been working with if the change just better clarifies the existing rules and doesn't change there function the board will probably use there 2/3rds majority to make such a change, if the change is functional then it will require a membership vote, hence me proposing one around the 20% rule. Again if you have suggestions here please put them forward. -- 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