Dear Project, The latest incident on this list has me questioning the efficacy of the openSUSE Board While I am not yet at the point of joining the calls for their full re-election, I do feel the Board as a whole and as individuals need to do more to justify the trust we put in them as a Project. The entire operation of the Board can only ever work if the Project trusts its Board. I do not see how Project members with integrity can do so at the moment. This fact undermines any decision, guidance or conflict resolution action of the Board and leads to a perverse situation where the morally & ethically “right” action could well be to ignore the Board and its decisions. Before I highlight concerns regarding individual Board members, I think the biggest issue is one they need to address as a whole - how the Board communicate and defend their decisions as a Board. I strongly believe that the Board should defend its decisions as a group. Once a decision is made, I feel the Board should all, collectively, own it and defend it. I do not think Board decisions can be defended individually. The whole point of the Board is to decide on topics (eg. conflict resolution) where individual empowerment has failed and an independent body is needed to step in and chart a course, often a controversial one. Easy decisions shouldn't need the Board. It is an imperfect model - In my time on the Board I certainly hated repeatedly defending decisions I disagreed with, but it is the role the Project requires. If the Board does not wish to operate under this model, then I think the only way forward is for each individual Board member to be far more active and visible than most of them currently are. Taking this recent incident as an example. I've been able to clearly take away the following from the recent incident: Simon has continued his mindset of "tolerating intolerance" and advocating for the support and inclusion of people who breach our community standards. This is consistent with his views during the "Rainbow flag" discussions of 9 months ago. His views do not appear to have evolved over those 9 months and I feel should disqualify them from being a Board member. I expressed this view both in my vote and in my campaigning for any-other-candidate in the last election, and intend to continue to do so. Neal and Gerald have been quietly supportive of the concept of consistent moderation, but I'd characterise their engagement with the thread as 'diplomatically attempting to avoid conflict', sometimes at the expense of addressing what needs to be addressed. I cannot say that I am wholly confident that I know where either of them stand or whether they believe very strongly on this topic. Gertjan was obviously strongly supportive of the concept of consistent moderation, to the point where he has clearly resigned over his perceived lack of support from his Board colleagues on the topic. Absolutely nothing has been heard from Douglas (besides wishing Gertjan well) or Patrick. The most generous assessment of their involvement in the Board is that they are currently empty chairs. If I was to speculate, based on Gertjan's decision to resign, it would be reasonable to assume that they lean more towards the Simon-side of the debate, making Gertjan's position for strong moderation clearly untenable as a minority opinion. But we just cannot be sure, because they are effectively absent. If the Board is not going to defend its decisions collectively (and this whole debate was triggered by a Board decision, it was even minuted), then the Board must all be active as individuals. If the Board fails to step up, either as a collective or as individuals, I do not see how they can effectively serve the Project. In its current form, I do not see how Project members are expected to respect, honour, or even consider their views more seriously than any other random person in the Project. Regards, Richard -- 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