Richard Brown wrote:
On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 20:43, Per Jessen <per@computer.org> wrote:
Which is why I think it's a very good thing the Board is elected, because that election is a collective mandate from the project, effectively stating "we the members who voted for you trust you to do the job we need you to do, but can't do ourselves"
I generally agree - except I don't believe that mandate leaves you immune to public scrutiny. "trust is good, control is better". Why are you so opposed to that idea?
Because the only way you could realistically judge whether or not the Board is making fair decisions or not, is if you had all of the information about the contributors and other organisations involved, which the Board are expected to keep private.
I may not be representative of the community as such, but I don't want to judge if the Board is making fair decisions or not. I would like to know if a board member I voted for also voted the way I would have wanted to. I voted for Gertjan, and I should like to know his opinions continue to coincide with mine. The community may have the power to dismiss the Board, but how can we exercise this power without information?
We already minute everything we can to the level we can, far beyond that of previous Boards in the project's 13 years. I think this is a good thing, and would hope it fulfils your desires on this topic. If it does not, then I do not see how we can satisify your demands without betraying the confidence of the people who trust the Board with their private information.
You'll have to elaborate, Richard. Surely the community can be told who voted yes/no/abstain in any openSUSE Board vote? where is the private information in that? I guess I am missing something.
That does not preclude a board member from publicly sharing his or her vote on a topic though. As Ana did. We don't even know the name of the local sports club yet nor who asked for sponsoring nor what kind of sponsoring. I personally have no desire to know either.
Ana did not share her vote, in practice she shared ALL of our votes. Without the permission or consent of any of the Board members.
Is there anything in the current rules or guidelines that actually prohibit it?
That is fair enough, I absolutely accept your position. Now shall we bring the proposal to a vote? I mean, let's finish the thread by tabling a motion for the board to vote on. I am not sure if my wording is good enough, I would prefer if someone could help out.
Yes, I would certainly like to know who voted what afterwards. :-)
Answering your question with a question - why should this be something the Board decide on? should we instead consider this as a Membership vote?
Assuming it is such a significant change of the openSUSE Board guidelines/code-of-conduct/something, it would probably be up to the Board to decide it does not have the authority to decide, and defer to the community. I admit not being current with the openSUSE Board guidelines/code-of-conduct/something.
Richard, pardon me interrupting your flow, but why should you, as the Chairman, be uncomfortable with your vote being public? You have the explicit backing and trust of SUSE Linux GmbH, you were appointed not elected, you don't really have to answer to the community. I totally understand why you may feel obliged anyway, but you have no such obligation. Having to make a difficult vote public does in no way detract from your mandate. (possibly if you voted against your backers, but then it might be better to resign).
Fair point, and I wanted to add to my mail after I sent it to address this point - so thanks for asking. I vote as an equal board member. My vote as Chairman is no different than a vote from any other Board member. It carries no additional weight, and my employer is not consulted before any of my votes on any Board topics. When I was interviewed for consideration as Chairman, I made it very clear to SUSE that I would continue the practice that I had as an elected Board member, voting with my personal opinion of what is best for the _Project_, not the company which appointed me.
Right, that's only what I would have expected.
I do not agree that I have no obligation to the community - the 5 elected Board members can tell SUSE to get rid of me. That's a lot less people than the 20% of the membership that can call to get rid of them ;) So while you could argue there is a level of abstraction compared to my Board colleagues, I would argue that I'm hanging by a weaker thread than others, and therefore I take my obligations to the community very seriously (hence the fact I'm STILL writing on this thread ;))
Haha, thanks for staying. I actually have no doubt you take your obligations to the community very seriously, in no way did I want to question that. I was only wondering about why you should feel uncomfortable about your vote [on any topic] being made public and thought you had little reason to think so. I still think so. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (23.2°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - your free DNS host, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org