On 11/11/19 2:27 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
On Mon, 11 Nov 2019 14:04:04 +1030, Simon Lees wrote:
And now we're being told that our vote wouldn't have mattered - which is precisely the point.
I asked questions *repeatedly* and explained why the information provided (even after the wiki update) was insufficent for me to be able to decide on a yes/no vote here, because the name we would change to *matters* to me for making up my opinion.
If the proposed name was, I don't know, "GoatSe Linux", I'd vote emphatically NO, because that would be a stupid and offensive name.
If the proposed name was "Chameleon Linux" - I probably would have voted "yes".
But nobody cared enough to address that concern. So I didn't vote.
That is perfectly fair, I did mention somewhere on a list at some point that it would probably be advantagious for those keen on changing the name to put together a possible short list of possible options that didn't likely have domain / trademark issues as people may be more likely to support a name change if they saw something they liked. But no one took the initiative to do that. Personally I didn't because personally i'm in favor of keeping the current name if possible.
One of the points of holding a leadership position is (in my view) is to make sure things are handled properly - separating oneself and one's own views from ensuring the process is handled correctly and equitably to all is something that I would consider an important characteristic of someone in a leadership position.
There's an issue of fundamental fairness, along with holding an official position of impartiality in the decision-making process when a vote takes place.
Respectfully, I don't think it's reasonable to abrogate one's responsibility as a community leader just because of a personally-held opinion about how a vote should go.
While I thought that the argument for changing the name could be enhanced with a list of suggested proposals I didn't believe the vote would be inherently unfair without it. Hence suggesting the idea but not going forward with it.
Either way the result we have is that most people want to stick with openSUSE regardless of the alternatives that may have been proposed so now we can stop thinking about changing the name and move to trying our best to come up with a solution for the foundation that means it has access to the name as needed.
Like I said - those of us who didn't have enough information don't get a voice. Had I had sufficient information to make an informed vote, I would have.
I'm fine with not changing the name. I'm just really disappointed in the process here, because I feel my vote didn't count because I wasn't provided an opportunity to formally express that opinion in the vote itself.
I'm not saying that you personally should have put together a list of prospective names. I'm saying the vote shouldn't even have been held until options had been discussed and put forward as options. Perhaps also what I'm saying is that until those concerns that were raised were addressed, it's incumbent on the community leadership to do what they can to ensure that everyone's voice is heard (not just the voices the leadership personally agrees with) when issues are raised. That plainly didn't happen here, and that's the source of my disappointment in the process.
I did raise this in a board meeting, but the decision was made that given the vote was holding up the foundation process we didn't want to wait for proposals for a new name to be collected and vetted before proceeding with the vote and that rather we would have a two stage process given that most responses on the mailing list had been either clearly in favor of changing regardless of the new name or not changing. So in this case the board listened to you (as with those who wanted a abstain option) and decided against them in this case. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B