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jdd wrote:
| Pascal Bleser a écrit :
|> - - a vote open to all ? worst of options IMO, as non-members could have
|> an interest to vote for people who put the bar a lot lower for becoming
|> member)
|
| ?
I meant that for a committee that would handle the membership status. I
think Cornelius proposed having another group of people manage that,
instead of the board.
My question was that in that case, how would that group of people be
selected ? Voting ? Similar issues as with the board.
And if I may add, that group of people who'd grant the membership status
(or not) would have more "power" than the board IMHO.
Hence it needs even more legitimation.
| I think for the first vote, vote should be open to all the *volunteer*
| (every people that asks to be able to vote).
That's one option. But you don't address the issue of fake votes.
My personal position atm (not that I wouldn't change my mind) is that
fake votes make the vote illegitimate and is one of the worst issues we
could have. If only one thing, then it's the fact that one individual
only votes once. It's a question of fairness and equal rights to
everyone who may vote. Someone with bad intentions (she would be
cheating, after all) having a higher weight than others is not
acceptable IMVHO.
Saying that "anyone may vote" is the preferred option, without a way to
avoid or at least /strongly/ restrict the possibilities of cheating
means that the fact to have a wide open process (which I agree is pretty
much a good thing) is _more_ _important_ than avoid cheating.
It's really a question of balance. There is no silver bullet.
We have to decide what is more important, or find a compromise (hence
the 3 proposals in the original mail).
| * right now the board *power* is very small. In fact the board can only
| suggest things to Novell or administrators. so the interest to be board
| member is low (and I'm sure the work is not low - we must thank the
| present board for doing that),
That is correct. Coolo is mostly arguing in favour of his "wide open"
proposal by saying that the interest of cheating to be on the board
should be very low, as it means a lot of work and not much "power" (if
at all).
This is clearly also my idea of the board: it is there to serve the
community, not to drive it. When we start initiatives, it isn't to force
something onto everyone, but to try to enhance the community
(visibility, communication channels, functioning, etc...).
In an ideal situation, even those aspects shouldn't come out of the
board, but from the community in general.
| in a near future, the board migh be given more power and be more
| attractive to ambitious people
I doubt that. The mission of the board is stated in the Guiding
Principles: http://en.opensuse.org/Guiding_Principles#Governance
Just to be very clear about this:
"The board of maintainers has the following tasks:
* Act as a central point of contact
* Help resolve conflicts
* Communicate community interests to Novell
* Facilitate communication with all areas of the community
* Facilitate decision making processes where needed"
and: "The board should provide guidance and support existing governance
structures, but shouldn't direct or control development, since community
mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project."
Whatever superpowers future boards may gain, they may *NOT* break the
definition above. The Guiding Principles are pretty much our
constitution. And the board may not break the constitution, at least not
without a new version of the Guiding Principles, have it approved by the
community, have people sign it again, etc... (a tedious process, nothing
that may happen overnight).
This is also why people who are elected on the board *MUST* have signed
the Guiding Principles: they must comply to the mission statement of the
board they're part of.
| * its possible (and necessary) to make public the voters list, so
| anybody can see it and eventually quote people with duplicate
| subscribtions.
Indeed. It has been proposed already, and I haven't seen anyone object
to having a public list of voters before the election.
| * the guiding principles themselves where not approved by a vote, so we
| should not even ask to sign them.
See above, at least for people who run for the board.
But I think it also applies to voters. If you vote for a board, you
first have to agree with the mission of the board... no ?
The Guiding Principles have been discussed widely on the -project list.
|> You really think that Francis, Stephan, Andreas, Federico and I are
|> favouring people who we know would vote for us when we check and vote
|> internally on their level of contribution to the project ?
|
| right now, I don't think. But this have been seen in many occasions (not
| only on web votes).
|
| However, the main problem is probably not this. The board have a given
| idea of what membership must be. this idea can be challenged, but if the
| members only vote, they are probably of the same group. life is made
| like this: you always choose people near from you, so this kind of vote
| lead to less open mind (as a group)
Have a look at the current list of members. There are quite a lot of
people there no one on the current board knows. We had to check the
contributions for many applicants as we didn't know them.
Which is a pretty cool side effect of the membership: you find people
who are actively contributing to the community you never heard of, even
after being in the community for quite some time. But I digress... :)
| I think we should see this vote as a way to *enhance* the community,
| both in quantity and in trust. I'm pretty sure most of the voters will
| have *more* interest in openSUSE after the vote than before. The more we
| can make vote, the more members we may have after that.
Very true, but I'm not sure about the corollary. As said, having
everyone who's in the community cast a vote would obviously be a good
thing (although... the board mostly acts for active contributors -- not
by definition, but in practice -- at least that's what I think, and in
that case, it could be more logical that only members vote for the
board.. well.. a bit difficult to explain in a few lines, and I don't
want to hijack the thread). But I've yet to see mechanisms that would
prevent cheating. And, to me, at this time, the most important aspect of
an election is that there is no cheating. I'm open to suggestions though :)
cheers
- --
~ -o) Pascal Bleser