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Hi folks
We (the board) would like to start working on a proposal for organising
the elections of the next board.
As a first step, and also because we want it to be an open and
transparent process, we'd like to hear about ideas and recommendations
about how we should do that.
There are obviously a few gotchas with the process for elections.
First of all, we don't want to give the impression the board is
arranging things to re-elect itself. We most probably won't have a
totally bullet proof process wrt that, but we'll do our best weighing
what's feasible (and reasonable). As I wrote a few times before, I'm
afraid there is a certain amount of trust that has to be put in our
hands, as we don't want the process to be overly complicated either.
Secondly, we do think that members should have a higher weight, as they
have signed the Guiding Principles and are recognized as active
contributors. Maybe we should even restrict the right to vote to
"official members". To be discussed.
And last but not least, here are a few immutable aspects, as defined in
the Guiding Principles [1]:
* we shall vote to elect 4 board members
* 2 of them must be community members (i.e. not Novell employees)
* 2 of them must be Novell employees
* the chair is a Novell employee and appointed by Novell
[1] http://en.opensuse.org/Guiding_Principles#Governance
So please start shooting ideas, brainstorming, thinking out loud.
The key questions are:
* Who can vote ?
* Who can we vote for ?
* How long should the voting period be ?
* How should elections work ? (from an organisational and technical POV)
And please also keep in mind we should aim for a process that is simple,
fair, and realistic (in terms of implementation).
We shall collect that information and map/reduce it into something
practicable as well as add our own ideas. The result of that process
will be published and discussed here, as well as on IRC meetings.
The current plan is to make a public board IRC meeting, possibly on
Monday 17th, or the week thereafter if we don't have enough results
yet -- we'll announce it on this list accordingly.
The process should be driven by everyone, and hence, we're looking
forward to your ideas :)
PS: for the sake of readability, please
- - keep the same email thread
- - don't hijack the thread with off-topic discussions
- - use proper email quoting and bottom-posting
Thanks for reading and for your ideas/feedback.
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser