On Sun, Mar 1, 2020 at 22:32, Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de> wrote:
On 3/1/20 9:31 PM, Stasiek Michalski wrote:
I would kindly ask the board to consider changing the election rules so we don't have situations where the board turns into a telenovela. People with "special relations", whatever the status of that relation, should not exist together on the board. It leads to certain kinds of involvement, which should never ever be a part of the board's dealings.
With the intention of basing the foundation rules on the current ones, do you have a recommended way of adding a rule that would cover this? it kinda gets pretty hard and messy, beyond if people do or don't end up in relationships people may work very closely together for up to 4 years on the board which can lead to really close friendships and people will naturally have a tendency to defend there friends.
Beyond that in our current rules we deem that having more then 40% of people from one company forms a conflict situation and don't allow that but is it acceptable for two people on the same team to run together or if someones direct manager is also on the board could that cause a conflict situation?
In the end the line between what is and isn't acceptable is often not clear and simple which makes it very hard to formulate into set rules. From my general experience I could say that as some general advice if you think that there is a possibility there could be a conflict of interest with another member of the board its best to not run or for one person to step down if things change while on the board.
If I was to have a go at actually drafting something that could be added to make this better I think it would end up being something along the lines of candidates should declare any affiliations / friendships / relationships with other board members or candidates before the voting period commences so that members can take this into account when they vote. Not doing so could be considered "serious misconduct or negligence" which is grounds for removal. But two years is a long time and alot can change in that time and i'm not sure how you'd cover all those cases other then hoping the community has chosen to elect candidates that are smart enough and willing to step back if they can see any potential for a conflict. Being such a grey area anything we would change would need to be exceptionally carefully worded. Having said that i'd love to here feedback on possible proposals with the thought of including it into the election rules or a future foundations constitution.
It would be good to look up if there are already organizations that employ rules against this kind of stuff, but... The current removal procedure mentions chairman contacting the board member to resolve the situation, but I don't think the chairman, or any person for that matter, has much influence over this kind of stuff, unless SUSE decides to appoint a cupid next time around. However, we need to have a rule for relationships that might influence one's choices, like affection, manager/managee, etc. to be grounds for removal via misconduct (or negligence if we also have a rule that a person in that position has a few week window to step down by themselves). A person in that position should not be eligible for election either, and specifying this stuff should be a duty of a candidate/board member in the first place. Basically every rule possible just so we are covered just in case, because this is ridiculous. LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org