Replying in Plain Text, as required by the Project's Rules: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_lists_subscription#Can_I_send_attac... Please can you start doing the same? On 2024-04-16 12:04, Patrick Fitzgerald wrote:
Richard,
Instead of speculating, it would wise to attend the board meetings to take part in the debate, or at least listen to what is going on.
I strongly feel the Board have a responsibility to work for ALL the community, not just the exclusive community that attend Board Meetings. If it is a policy of the openSUSE Board to treat issues raised in person with a higher priority or severity than other issues then please add that to the list of issues I feel the Board needs to address. I will _NOT_ be attending any Board Meetings while the Board effectively gives more weight to issues in those meetings to those across the Project
Calling 2 members of the board "empty chairs" is insulting and counter productive.
And yet both you and Doug were totally absent from the discussions till now. Discussions which your input could have been useful in. My views that you should be more directly engaged with the community are reinforced by how fast you and Doug have appeared to defend yourselves. I would have preferred you defended the Board or the Community with this same passion.
If you _were_ to attend you would be party to the decisions and how they came to be made. Oh and the dissent as well.
If the only way of community has to understand the decisions of the Board is by attending a particular meeting at a particular time, then the Board is conducting itself in a way that inheriently disadvantages a wide number of members across the world. I do not agree with this practice. Meetings have their place, but they have to be complimentary to a broader package of engagement with the community. Else the Board is just going to have an echo-chamber of itself and a few who can afford to attend at the time that best suits the Board.
I strongly believe that the Board should defend its decisions as a group.
Well I agree with that.
Once a decision is made, I feel the Board should all, collectively, own it and defend it.
Now I'm confused. So you want the whole board to come out, and individually defend the decisions made as a group? Or?
I think the best way forward is for the Board to collectively own it's decisions, even bad ones. So, lets take the recent example. The minutes made it clear, the Board decided to not act on the reports of the endless nonsense in IRC The Board should have collectively owned that. All six of you. Gerald, Neal, Gertjan, should all have kept their individual mouths shut or fully backed the decision to not act. Or the Board should have made a different decision. But as we see from the thread, what we got instead was an utterly confused mess, which I could even summarise for comedic effect The minutes made it clear the Board decided to do nothing about IRC moderation. Shawn (Community Moderator) highlighted a project with that decision. Simon defended the Board decision, thread continued. Gerald, Gertjan, Neal, all undermined that Board decision by stating they supported the CoC, Moderation, etc. As an observer to what happened in the "Board meeting minutes 2024-02-26" thread how can any reasnoble person come to any other conclusion than the Board is an absolute dysfunctional mess? I don't want a dysfunctional Board. If you're going to make decisions (even bad ones, which leaving IRC as a mess would be), you all need to own them. Or, if you'd prefer to continue in a mode similar to what we saw in this thread..where one thing was minuted just for 3 Board members to immediately say they wanted the opposite, then I think ALL Board members should be more active _WHERE THE COMMUNITY IS_..not in their ivory tower of meetings. I won't bother quote-replying to the rest of your bullets or your other reply..best to keep the discussion focused on the big picture..I think that's something we all need to be better at. -- Richard Brown Distributions Architect SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Frankenstraße 146, D-90461 Nuremberg, Germany (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) Managing Directors/Geschäftsführer: Ivo Totev, Andrew McDonald, Werner Knoblich