On 08/24/2018 12:44 PM, Bryan Lunduke wrote:

It is not only appropriate that those personal points of view are expressed... it is *critical*.

The Board positions are elected (other than Richard, who is installed by a corporation).  If Board members cannot speak their personal opinions on any (and every) topic, it becomes *pointless* to have elections -- as there would be no way to easily understand the differences between elected officials and hold them accountable to the people who elected them.

Are there any other items Board members are currently forbidden / discouraged from discussing?

-Bryan Lunduke

I agree with this, completely. Although once voted on, all Board Members should agree to/accept the final decision of the vote, at least until something changes to bring it back to a vote in the future. However, the whole idea of the democratic process tied to elected Board Members requires that the results of votes and differing personal opinions should be available and transparent to the voters. Dissenters should still be allowed to express their stand on the issue, but not to a point where it becomes disruptive or dysfunctional. As voters, we have a right to know where the individual Board Members stand on Board issues. That is called transparency. But, please note, my expressing this view is in no way meant to be critical of the Board or anyone on the Board. Just that I urge the Board to reconsider whether differing views should be public, which I thoroughly believe they should be. -- -Gerry Makaro openSUSE Member openSUSE Forum Moderator openSUSE Contributor aka Fraser_Bell on the Forums, OBS, IRC, and mail at openSUSE.org Fraser-Bell on Github -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2018-08-25 00:22, Richard Brown wrote:

I would like you to consider the following - Board members are individuals elected by a popular vote, with the top 2-3 of any years votes being the new members of the Board

This election model means that upon joining the Board, 1-2 of the Boards new members have the awkward position of feeling that they are everybodies "second favourite" choice

Correct. That's how every election -- in every industry/government across the globe -- works. If someone doesn't want to "come in second" they don't run for office. Even popular people lose. Just how it works. That's life.

And yet, we (the Project) need the Board to act like a group of equals. They can't do that if they are having to worry about that popularity skew from the election.

What you are saying here is that you don't feel the openSUSE Board can function if the elected board members are considering the views and needs of those that voted them into office. That is super-duper-off-the-charts wrong.

The Board needs to be an environment that supports dissent too. I like the fact that the current Board is full of passionate members and we manage to fill a whole hour every week seeking agreement on the topics we're discussing.

Good. We are in agreement there. Let's encourage dissent and transparency. This is good for all.

But the Board's ability to function in it's roles of decision makers of last resort, or arbitrator of disputes, is severely impacted if the Board cannot be seen to be a unified body.

This is also true of every government. Dissent in government impacts the ability force their will on the constituents. Yet we're not a fan of dictatorships.

Any decision in any dispute, normally the most agonising and difficult decisions we make given they can impact someone's ability to remain part of the Project, risks its credibility undermined if the long, arduous deliberations we put into such things were always made public.

You are fundamentally wrong there. By this logic there is no point in having an elected Board at all. Might as well simply have one single, all-powerful role that nobody can disagree with.

I've also seen dissenting Board members threaten to airing their dissent publicly during the decision making process, in what I felt was a naked effort to change the decisions of their peers. This was a behaviour I find grossly distasteful and I greatly appreciate our general principle of the Board presenting all of our decisions collectively as an effort to suppress such toxic behaviour.

It shouldn't need to be a threat. Things should simply be public and transparent within the openSUSE Board. Keeping things "secret" and "controlled" is, in my opinion, far more toxic for such an organization.

That said, I totally get transparency is important, and support it.

Good. Do it. Always.

So taking the soccer club sponsorship decision as an example. When the feedback started coming in questioning the decision, I would have strongly supported any Board member taking the opportunity to give the project a 'peek behind the curtain' about the decision making process.

I'm getting some mixed signals here, my friend. :) Just a few days ago you chastised others for being public about Board decisions: "Replying a little seriously, and to justify my vote publicly (which is something I shouldn't have to do, given the Board's rule that decisions made collectively are defended collectively, but someone seems to have forgotten that... :-/ )" - Richard Brown, Tuesday

And sure, if Ana had been the one telling the Project in abstract that one person had objected to the decision, some conspiracy theorists might have put 2+2 together and guessed right this time that Ana was the one objecting.

It really shouldn't be theorizing. Just be public, no problems in trying to work so hard to keep things secret.

The community deserves to know the Board is as diverse as it is and agonises at length over the decisions it makes.

Totally! Agreed! Transparency helps that. Just give in to openness. :)

If every individuals personal view was aired constantly on the lists, I fear it would turn the Board into more of a reality-show drama and less of a necessary decision making function in the Project.

Meh. Maybe. Democracy (in all forms) is messy. You can accept that messiness is part of it, or fight it to try to be a secrecy-filled form of governing. -Bryan Lunduke -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2018-08-25 13:01, Richard Brown wrote:

...

Correct. That's how every election -- in every industry/government across the globe -- works. If someone doesn't want to "come in second" they don't run for office.

Even popular people lose. Just how it works. That's life.

But the Board is not 'running for office' in a sense that can be considered analogous to any industry or government.

openSUSE Board Members are not empowered to create laws or sign orders which others are duty bound to follow

Especially when you consider our primary role being one of dispute resolution and judgement, we have more in common with Jurors than company Board Members or Elected politicans

This is incorrect. The openSUSE Board also makes budgetary decisions, endorsement decisions (and policies / plans), coordination with other organizations (and individuals), event planning, and even decisions of who will (or won't) be allowed to be members of openSUSE (or utilize openSUSE resources). The "jury" comparison you make is absolutely accurate... for a very small portion of what the openSUSE Board does.

...

I'm getting some mixed signals here, my friend. :)

Just a few days ago you chastised others for being public about Board decisions:

"Replying a little seriously, and to justify my vote publicly (which is something I shouldn't have to do, given the Board's rule that decisions made collectively are defended collectively, but someone seems to have forgotten that... :-/ )" - Richard Brown, Tuesday

And you are either acting intentionally obtuse or don't notice the huge monumental difference between a situation where Board members are required to stand up publicly as individuals and justify their decision in public, and a situation where the Board collectively owns both the decision "we as a group feel X" and the dissent "but a number in our group also felt Y"

I'll just move past the out-of-left-field personal attacks...

The Board have been elected to a position where they are the final arbiters of any decision that gets to their desk. If an issue gets to their desk it can be argued that it only does so because no other contributor was willing or able to make the decisions via our usual (very public) means.

Somewhat correct. This sort of process is not entirely unlike many forms of government (such as in the USA) where the higher levels handle the items that the lower levels either haven't, or chose not to tackle themselves (City/County/State/Federal). That said, the openSUSE Board also tackles items that do not first come in front of the broader openSUSE membership. Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Either way, this is fine (as the Board is elected to handle such things)... but it is entirely not like Juries in any real way.

I think it is therefore highly important that those decisions which are trusted to the Board, are conducted in a way that empowers each Board member to act on their conscious, without fear of public reprisals after the fact.

I get it. Your position is that a person in an elected position should be able to carry out their duties in secret -- and people who voted for them have no right to know how they vote or what their options are. That's weird to me. I see your point, I simply disagree with it on a very core level.

If the Project wishes to fundamentally change the role and purpose of the Board then I'd be willing to see that go to a Membership vote.

Yes. I think this would be good. Simply make the votes public. That's all. Every vote taken by the openSUSE Board -- on *every* issue -- should be made public. That way, when the next election occurs, the openSUSE membership can make an informed decision on who to elect (or re-elect) to best represent us.

But the absolute transparency you seem to advocate for, would not get my vote - if such an idea is popular, I would suggest the Board as we know it would be pointless - we might as well have anyone and everyone making every decision in public.

That's ok. I respect your thoughts here. I believe you would be out-voted by the membership by a rather wide margin. Anyone else want the votes of Board members to be public? Having a simple vote on this would seem to me to be an easy way to settle this (without the whole name-calling thing). -Bryan Lunduke -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Simon Lees wrote:

On 26/08/2018 06:46, Bryan Lunduke wrote:

...

This is incorrect.

The openSUSE Board also makes budgetary decisions, endorsement decisions (and policies / plans), coordination with other organizations (and individuals), event planning, and even decisions of who will (or won't) be allowed to be members of openSUSE (or utilize openSUSE resources).

I'll only reply to this part because its slightly incorrect. The board has no say in who becomes an openSUSE member, this is done by a separate membership committee as to avoid a conflict of interest. Yes the board can in certain situations remove members but if the community doesn't think we handle this correctly they can also choose to remove us or not vote for us the next time.

Maybe there are a couple of issues here that the Board ought to address. We don't vote for "us", we vote for "you", so a) how can we know if a board member handles <a situation correctly> if the vote/opinion of the individual is not public? b) why is it that the Board can dismiss a member but not admit one? I.e. do we not need to avoid conflicts of interest when dismissing a member? -- Per Jessen, Zürich (19.6°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - virtual servers, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Simon Lees wrote:

On 27/08/2018 02:47, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Maybe there are a couple of issues here that the Board ought to address.

We don't vote for "us", we vote for "you", so a) how can we know if a board member handles <a situation correctly> if the vote/opinion of the individual is not public?

How do you know I handled a situation correctly if the board has chosen not to make any details of that situation public? Or if the only information we make public is that the board helped resolve a conflict between two people?

In that situation, obviously I can't.

The truth is you will never be able to see everything we do so you'll just have to judge us on the bits you see.

I wasn't suggesting or asking that _every_ vote should be made public, just that it should be perfectly acceptable to do so. As in this case. [snip]

when I vote for something in a board meeting i get a chance to justify why I am voting a certain way simply putting my name down in the minutes as voting for or against X does not allow me to justify my reasoning.

There isn't really any need to justify your vote to the community, but the community might still like to know how you represent their interests. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (16.8°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - virtual servers, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* James Mason [08-27-18 11:44]:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256

On Sat, 2018-08-25 at 22:01 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

...

The Project elected a Board to do a specific job. We're not Board members as part of some political or business exercise, but to serve the Project in a very specific way, doing an often ugly job so no one else has to.

This has an analogue in juries around the world, an equally thankless task, but important one. One where the words and statements of jurors made during their deliberations cannot be made public.

The outcome of that deliberation, the decision of guilt or innocence, and the number of jurors for and against a decision are shared as an output of those deliberations, but the deliberations themselves are sacrosanct and forbidden from being aired in any court in order to ensure that those decisions can be made without any fear of external influence.

The Board have been elected to a position where they are the final arbiters of any decision that gets to their desk. If an issue gets to their desk it can be argued that it only does so because no other contributor was willing or able to make the decisions via our usual (very public) means. We are after all, decision makers and arbiters of last resort - the community should be taking care of any issue that it can long before it ever ends up needing a Board decision.

I think it is therefore highly important that those decisions which are trusted to the Board, are conducted in a way that empowers each Board member to act on their conscious, without fear of public reprisals after the fact.

The 'jury' analogy only goes so far, as a jury is an imposed responsibility, whereas joining the Board is a public action of choice - - exactly akin to running for office.

There's a reasonable expectation that a representative will share their decisions with their constituency, otherwise there is no check on the validity of their representation. That's a relatively clear and obvious core tenet of representational governing, and yes I'd like to see the Board move that direction.

On the other hand, I do recognize the jurist component, but again, you cannot separate the self-selected public nature of running for the Board, so the only fair comparison is something like the US. Supreme Court, where not only do we know the votes, and an opinion by the group in support of the decision, but any number of dissenting opinions, by those who disagree with the majority. This makes the issue completely transparent, and has the bonus of allowing future Board members the opportunity to understand the decision, and possibly correct for new conditions in the future, without "guessing" at prior intent.

While I understand the decisions of our governing Board may be not quite as dramatic as all that would suggest, I think it's fair and reasonable for the membership to ask for, and if necessary vote to impose, some more transparency from the board; e.g.

1) Knowing what issues the Board has voted on, and who voted how. 2) Having an opinion from the majority about the decision (this we have now) 3) Expecting dissenters to the majority opinion to express the nature of their dissent within the bounds of the issue and majority opinion.

sell said, and I also support your ensuing msg. I elect represenative(s) with an expectation of them following the path I determine from their bio and presentations prior to election. I *really* want to know that they are doing as I expect and the *only* way is to see their votes and arguments. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2018-08-27 11:43, James Mason wrote:

On Sat, 2018-08-25 at 22:01 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

...

The Project elected a Board to do a specific job. We're not Board members as part of some political or business exercise, but to serve the Project in a very specific way, doing an often ugly job so no one else has to.

...

This has an analogue in juries around the world, an equally thankless task, but important one. One where the words and statements of jurors made during their deliberations cannot be made public.

...

The outcome of that deliberation, the decision of guilt or innocence, and the number of jurors for and against a decision are shared as an output of those deliberations, but the deliberations themselves are sacrosanct and forbidden from being aired in any court in order to ensure that those decisions can be made without any fear of external influence.

...

The Board have been elected to a position where they are the final arbiters of any decision that gets to their desk. If an issue gets to their desk it can be argued that it only does so because no other contributor was willing or able to make the decisions via our usual (very public) means. We are after all, decision makers and arbiters of last resort - the community should be taking care of any issue that it can long before it ever ends up needing a Board decision.

...

I think it is therefore highly important that those decisions which are trusted to the Board, are conducted in a way that empowers each Board member to act on their conscious, without fear of public reprisals after the fact.

The 'jury' analogy only goes so far, as a jury is an imposed responsibility, whereas joining the Board is a public action of choice - exactly akin to running for office.

There is also the professional jury people - maybe wrong name, not jury. In my country, they decide then write a decision, but dissenting members write their own writeup if they wish. And these are public, so we know who voted what and who disagreed.

There's a reasonable expectation that a representative will share their decisions with their constituency, otherwise there is no check on the validity of their representation. That's a relatively clear and obvious core tenet of representational governing, and yes I'd like to see the Board move that direction.

Me too.

On the other hand, I do recognize the jurist component, but again, you cannot separate the self-selected public nature of running for the Board, so the only fair comparison is something like the US. Supreme Court, where not only do we know the votes, and an opinion by the group in support of the decision, but any number of dissenting opinions, by those who disagree with the majority. This makes the issue completely transparent, and has the bonus of allowing future Board members the opportunity to understand the decision, and possibly correct for new conditions in the future, without "guessing" at prior intent.

Right.

While I understand the decisions of our governing Board may be not quite as dramatic as all that would suggest, I think it's fair and reasonable for the membership to ask for, and if necessary vote to impose, some more transparency from the board; e.g.

1) Knowing what issues the Board has voted on, and who voted how. 2) Having an opinion from the majority about the decision (this we have now) 3) Expecting dissenters to the majority opinion to express the nature of their dissent within the bounds of the issue and majority opinion.

Right. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 15.0 (Legolas)) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thursday, 30 August 2018 16:40:43 ACST, Markus Feilner wrote:

In Germany, most elected boards have a fairly differenciated approach: For different tasks, different voting systems will apply. Simple Majority, 2/3 or even 3/4 are merely examples. But they also use different voting procedures: Vote by raising hand, secret vote, written and named votes (which is the ultimate transparent if the results are shared, because it can be reproduced at any given time). I guess there is no solution that matches all situations, and it is good practice in democratic systems to make use of all options, adapted to the needs of a situation. I guess the board can set up its own rules for that, can't they?

For most things yes we can do what we want, there are some exceptions though like for example its documented that removing a board member requires 2/3 of the other board members, generally we vote kinda by hand raise (well as well as that works in a video conference call) -- 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

Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2018 21:44:14 CEST schreef Bryan Lunduke:

On 2018-08-24 08:32, Ana Martínez wrote:

...

= Sponsorships =

== Football team discussion in the last minutes thread ==

We discussed if was appropriated to explain personal points of views on the topic.

It is not only appropriate that those personal points of view are expressed... it is *critical*.

The Board positions are elected (other than Richard, who is installed by a corporation). If Board members cannot speak their personal opinions on any (and every) topic, it becomes *pointless* to have elections -- as there would be no way to easily understand the differences between elected officials and hold them accountable to the people who elected them.

Are there any other items Board members are currently forbidden / discouraged from discussing?

-Bryan Lunduke

I completely disagree here, Bryan, and I consider your post as trolling. You know very well how it works and has worked. We did not discuss whether or not we have personal opinions, we discussed ventilating disagreement with decisions democraticly taken. As you know any board member can suggest to ask the community and let them vote, but the community chooses the board to facilitate decision making. Also, the board operates as a team. Would you accept team members that question any decision that was voted on? This board is trying to be more transparant in communication through the minutes. I will discourage ( can't forbid, nobody can and you know that ) any mentioning of persons where it considers conflict resolution f.e. . I will also discourage to publish nasty conflicts inside the board with ugly member behaviour, as an other example. You yourself have lived the Board and have every time it was discussed agreed to keep certain things private, and now after eight months of silence from your side this? Come on, disappointing. -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Op zaterdag 25 augustus 2018 20:09:20 CEST schreef Per Jessen:

Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

...

Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2018 21:44:14 CEST schreef Bryan Lunduke:

...

On 2018-08-24 08:32, Ana Martínez wrote:

...

= Sponsorships =

== Football team discussion in the last minutes thread ==

We discussed if was appropriated to explain personal points of views on the topic.

It is not only appropriate that those personal points of view are expressed... it is *critical*.

The Board positions are elected (other than Richard, who is installed by a corporation). If Board members cannot speak their personal opinions on any (and every) topic, it becomes *pointless* to have elections -- as there would be no way to easily understand the differences between elected officials and hold them accountable to the people who elected them.

Are there any other items Board members are currently forbidden / discouraged from discussing?

-Bryan Lunduke

I completely disagree here, Bryan, and I consider your post as trolling. You know very well how it works and has worked. We did not discuss whether or not we have personal opinions, we discussed ventilating disagreement with decisions democraticly taken.

I have to agree with Bryan. A board does not operate as a team.

With Bryan it didn't, no. But in cases as our community it should, or it should go out and tell the voters it can't function like this.

The individual members are appointed or elected because of their individual charm/ability/following/haircolour/experience/outlook/whatever. It is very important that the elected members remain true to that. It is the main thing they bring to the party.

And that's exactly what I'm doing here.

If a board member disagrees with a democratic decision, it is perfectly fine to point that out. That is not the issue. If the board, as a democratic entity, votes, the result is that of the board, not of individuals. Whenever a member disagrees and wants to post about it, it's nothing more than decent to state that a personal statement is made. That's one of the consequenses of being a board member, having two hats. Isn't it quite simply this - when I disagree with a decision made by the board, I would like to know that the board member I elected also disagreed?

Of course, but that should be a statement from Per Jessen, community member, not Per Jessen, Board member.

...

Would you accept team members that question any decision that was voted on?

Certainly. I would. Professionally, I am a board member in other places. We don't operate as a team, we are there to govern a company based on our personal experiences, opinions and outlook. When a board operates as a team, you only have to look at Raiffeisen Schweiz to see how bad it can go. Or even my local football club.

A company != a community. And I don't care about examples of things going wrong. If you think we're on the wrong track, gather the crowd and bring down the board as an ultimate measure. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Op zondag 26 augustus 2018 18:49:25 CEST schreef Per Jessen:

Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

...

Op zaterdag 25 augustus 2018 20:09:20 CEST schreef Per Jessen:

...

If a board member disagrees with a democratic decision, it is perfectly fine to point that out.

That is not the issue. If the board, as a democratic entity, votes, the result is that of the board, not of individuals. Whenever a member disagrees and wants to post about it, it's nothing more than decent to state that a personal statement is made. That's one of the consequenses of being a board member, having two hats.

...

Isn't it quite simply this - when I disagree with a decision made by the board, I would like to know that the board member I elected also disagreed?

Of course, but that should be a statement from Per Jessen, community member, not Per Jessen, Board member.

Uh no. They are the same. Only if Per Jessen speaks on behalf of the board would I have to consider the board's opinion or decision. As a board member, I should hope my opinion in board meetings would be the same as expressed publicly.

...

...

...

Would you accept team members that question any decision that was voted on?

Certainly. I would. Professionally, I am a board member in other places. We don't operate as a team, we are there to govern a company based on our personal experiences, opinions and outlook. When a board operates as a team, you only have to look at Raiffeisen Schweiz to see how bad it can go. Or even my local football club.

A company != a community. And I don't care about examples of things going wrong. If you think we're on the wrong track, gather the crowd and bring down the board as an ultimate measure.

Please Gertjan, why not be open for discussion, what is it with the trumpish stance? As an elected or appointed member for a company or a sports club or openSUSE, your obligations are more or less the same. You are there to help govern the <entity> according to your beliefs, opinions and insights. I am open for discussion, Per. But I don't believe in total transparency where names are involved f.e. or details of conflicts are revealed.

-- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 27/08/18 07:39, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Knurpht-openSUSE [08-26-18 16:57]: [...]

...

I am open for discussion, Per. But I don't believe in total transparency where names are involved f.e. or details of conflicts are revealed. it is about where you or the individual stands on the issues, not about "conflicts" which should not happen. differences of opinion are expected and needed to resolve issues, that they be understood.

I would definitely want to know how one voted as I may have an opinion about particular issue and want to vote for someone who follows what I expect. how else can one determine who they want to represent them?

I agree with what you say. I also would like to add a thought which only now just occurred to me -- you'll see why I say this in a minute. Over the years I have been on many committees, more like 'boards' if you like, and on one I was the Secretary with one my responsibilities, of course, was to produce the detailed Minutes of the 'board's' ordinary and extraordinary meetings. The Minutes naturally contained the usual words of "Motion passed unanimously" or "Passed by majority votes" or similar wording. After the Minutes were written-up they were circulated as a draft to all 'board' members for correction/addition/approval before I produced the final version to be adopted as the official record of the meeting at the next meeting of the 'board'. The thought which only just now occurred to me is: while the Minutes may have stated that some Motion was approved by a majority of 'board' members there was never a list of who voted for or against the Motion. It just never occurred to anyone to have such a list included in the Minutes. Alright, when you think about it doing so would become a tedious task -- but there is a very simple solution to this. The draft Minutes are circulated to each Member for correction/etc before being finalised so during this editing stage the member(s) who voted AGAINST a motion adds his/her name(s) stating "Voted Against: Joe Doe, Mary Contrary,...". Since the members present at that meeting are always listed at the beginning of the Minutes it becomes clear by elimination who voted FOR the motion. This would produce the transparency which you, Patrick, and, I will add, also other Community members, is requesting in what you wrote above.

it appears embarassment and or blame are being considered and they should never enter into the process.

This should be considered as self-evident. BC -- "Truth isn't truth." Rudy Guiliani, Donald Trump's lawyer, 20 August 2018 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 08/25/2018 08:09 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

...

Op vrijdag 24 augustus 2018 21:44:14 CEST schreef Bryan Lunduke:

...

On 2018-08-24 08:32, Ana Martínez wrote:

...

= Sponsorships =

== Football team discussion in the last minutes thread ==

We discussed if was appropriated to explain personal points of views on the topic.

It is not only appropriate that those personal points of view are expressed... it is *critical*.

The Board positions are elected (other than Richard, who is installed by a corporation). If Board members cannot speak their personal opinions on any (and every) topic, it becomes *pointless* to have elections -- as there would be no way to easily understand the differences between elected officials and hold them accountable to the people who elected them.

Are there any other items Board members are currently forbidden / discouraged from discussing?

-Bryan Lunduke

I completely disagree here, Bryan, and I consider your post as trolling. You know very well how it works and has worked. We did not discuss whether or not we have personal opinions, we discussed ventilating disagreement with decisions democraticly taken.

I have to agree with Bryan. A board does not operate as a team. The individual members are appointed or elected because of their individual charm/ability/following/haircolour/experience/outlook/whatever. It is very important that the elected members remain true to that. It is the main thing they bring to the party. If a board member disagrees with a democratic decision, it is perfectly fine to point that out. Isn't it quite simply this - when I disagree with a decision made by the board, I would like to know that the board member I elected also disagreed?

Me too. I would like to know what each board member votes, so that next time we have to elect the board I can make an informed choice. This is simple democratic standards. I can know what each member of parliament said on camera or what each one voted, except when the vote was decided to be secret.

...

Would you accept team members that question any decision that was voted on?

Certainly. I would. Professionally, I am a board member in other places. We don't operate as a team, we are there to govern a company based on our personal experiences, opinions and outlook. When a board operates as a team, you only have to look at Raiffeisen Schweiz to see how bad it can go. Or even my local football club.

-- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 15.0 (Legolas))

On Sun, 26 Aug 2018 at 11:51, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

...

I completely disagree here, Bryan, and I consider your post as trolling. You know very well how it works and has worked. We did not discuss whether or not we have personal opinions, we discussed ventilating disagreement with decisions democraticly taken.

I have to agree with Bryan. A board does not operate as a team. The individual members are appointed or elected because of their individual charm/ability/following/haircolour/experience/outlook/whatever. It is very important that the elected members remain true to that. It is the main thing they bring to the party. If a board member disagrees with a democratic decision, it is perfectly fine to point that out. Isn't it quite simply this - when I disagree with a decision made by the board, I would like to know that the board member I elected also disagreed?

Me too. I would like to know what each board member votes, so that next time we have to elect the board I can make an informed choice. This is simple democratic standards. I can know what each member of parliament said on camera or what each one voted, except when the vote was decided to be secret.

Would this same principle of openness apply to the membership votes? Both the election of Board members and any other special voting (such as those for constitutional change)? I imagine such a suggestion to be apocalyptic to community harmony, with Board members ignoring those who voted against them and favouring those who voted for them, with groups of members bickering amongst each other for voting contrary to their opinions. Many countries, even with very open democracies, have secret ballots for this very reason, to ensure that the electorate can vote based on their internal, personal views, without worrying about public reprisals for their decisions. Given the nature of many of the issues the Board has to vote upon, the ability for each Board member to vote based on their concious, knowing that the Board collectively will own the groups decision, is a freedom which I would miss if it were removed. To give a highly illustrative example with names removed to preserve the innocent. There is at least one person active on our mailinglists who has been the subject of a number of petitions to the Board for their removal from the Project, due to what I would describe as their persistent 'misalignment' with the rest of the Project. The Board has repeatedly evaluated that the person involved has not acted in a way that can be considered a breach of our guiding principles, but there is also no question that the person in question is a source of constant frustration for a significant proportion of the Project All of these petitions to the Board regarding this individual have been shot down on the grounds of being 'wrong' in the eyes of the Board to consider the removal of the person in question. (See all the other recent statements regarding everyone's acceptance of a healthy amount of dissent for more background) Any time this topic has been minuted, it has been done so with all details anonymised - giving a full public account of those votes would undermine the outcome of the vote protecting the member in question. Considering this example in a situation where Board votes were public, there would are two major differences I can forsee 1) The Board would be compelled to minute all of the details of who was involved in the petition to the Board, including the initiators of the complaints and the subjects - There is no way this is a good thing. People having a problem with others in the Project should feel they can reach out to the Board in confidence, and people accused of being disruptive to the Project deserve privacy. Even if the Board kept its current role as abitrators of disputes, such a model of disclosure would risk every dispute descending into a public trial of the individuals involved. 2) Individuals in the Board would likely be swayed by considering what was popular, not what was right. In this example, I think it's safe to argue that it would be a highly popular move to vote in agreement with the petition to remove the disruptive member, even though it would be an ethically incorrect one. I wouldn't want to be part of the Project that operated like that, but that is the pandoras box we risk opening if we go down this road. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On Sun, 2018-08-26 at 15:26 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

Would this same principle of openness apply to the membership votes? Both the election of Board members and any other special voting (such as those for constitutional change)?

I imagine such a suggestion to be apocalyptic to community harmony, with Board members ignoring those who voted against them and favouring those who voted for them, with groups of members bickering amongst each other for voting contrary to their opinions.

Many countries, even with very open democracies, have secret ballots for this very reason, to ensure that the electorate can vote based on their internal, personal views, without worrying about public reprisals for their decisions.

Again, jike the jury analogy, you're conflating the responsibility put on an entire democratic community with the expectations placed on people who self-select to be the public decision makers. Those who have responsibility thrust upon them should have a reasonable expectation of anonymity for their decision. Those who choose to run for office, who _self-select to be more public about their decisions_ have an obigation to share them. If one doesn't want to make their opinions public, for whatever reason, they should not run for office. - -- James Mason SUSE -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEg/RjZ+RraZBnLRN4GzlRiGxEkCMFAluEHSkACgkQGzlRiGxE kCPX3wf/Qn66z1l4K0Lisbu5eS2H/x/fpu6apyIWlnL9dPeSNXuQcnm4HwRB9GI7 MJ5d43iOjLrjqzndj9UpEZ0KHfSgD7pXiozc/91y4jBEQ5pp0djnis3IK7JpeDu0 7/QlH89VQQi1x5CCgM2zBKKaBbRuNstsqnpur+Uk4LJzLD1CDTu/KlZlhFCVMXtI LnWSO8wAM2TB8P0Zea7SwihXP6tWSwHbToZ/FpyNfFc1etNxPXFeFpJRmAdSBYBm 1yrx8u5Unnt7xNEj1ziRBJDAKF5nLBi3FKeIv4yI4+VCv+VR0ToUTZYUMusP7JjZ 1FzAv3m99jbWd6Tq89VdBpemDiTjKQ== =94QA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

* Richard Brown [08-27-18 12:36]:

On Mon, 27 Aug 2018 at 17:48, James Mason wrote:

...

If one doesn't want to make their opinions public, for whatever reason, they should not run for office.

Fair points, but, unlike the Supreme court, Board membership is not for life.

Let me give a real world example, as much as I can.

There is a person active on these mailinglists who in 2016 was banned from these lists [...]

transparency does not require airing dirty linen. some discretion is still required and should be supported. the *rest* should be public record. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On Mon, 2018-08-27 at 18:33 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

The banned individual has been successful in rehabilitating themselves, and the Board members have returned to non-Board life, in a way that I am certain would not have been possible if they were aware of the details of who voted for what when.

The fact that you can use it as an example now exactly supports my point. In your example, the rehabilitated member could just as easily look at who was on the board at the time and blame everyone equally - hiding the votes doesn't shield members of the board, it just creates opacity. And I agree with Patrick & Henne here; no one is asking for every little detail - especially when it comes to respecting the rights of the Membership; I'm just asking for more clarity about decisions that are made, _why_ they are made, and what arguments were made in dissent of the decision. While I, personally, have a level of faith in the Board to "Do The Right Thing", that does not supercede the need to witness that the Board actually _did_. - -- James Mason SUSE -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEg/RjZ+RraZBnLRN4GzlRiGxEkCMFAluELq0ACgkQGzlRiGxE kCOLRgf/aCikbgOQr6/tgMyCnLhbRE+V7jwaNBQw4w/x9EI3VILUopyMm/rqToOd K1wemXUY8cjV27F6X+WfBRXtK9FSlnYdMj9YbMpFA6a7MBnxGF6hcDNiyeBOlsLe uFmcW6D1KraHNd1cC7+ZQ32pp8hcResHlfjYAQKk+67wY87hYqrAfuj9D/i+mgbt Sq9IBZgSSGFnI/RUfcMJ28OQlpZDM2WDEC63EL4gdpKp53pp8lx58f6XrHW6s3Hz UGrtrfvGzsknmM7+iYX89WvXIUZUN4+BGB3v03WlIwn0P2mlijv0otGfvxEtcRbV QwCCB7cft89zIf6KnaH1xp4eSHColA== =+On+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On 2018-08-27 13:02, James Mason wrote:

On Mon, 2018-08-27 at 18:33 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

...

The banned individual has been successful in rehabilitating themselves, and the Board members have returned to non-Board life, in a way that I am certain would not have been possible if they were aware of the details of who voted for what when.

The fact that you can use it as an example now exactly supports my point. In your example, the rehabilitated member could just as easily look at who was on the board at the time and blame everyone equally - hiding the votes doesn't shield members of the board, it just creates opacity.

As I was one of the banned people once, that is exactly how I feel. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 15.0 (Legolas)) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Sat, 1 Sep 2018 at 16:00, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Mon, 27 Aug 2018 18:33:52 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Mon, 27 Aug 2018 at 17:48, James Mason wrote:

...

If one doesn't want to make their opinions public, for whatever reason, they should not run for office.

Fair points, but, unlike the Supreme court, Board membership is not for life.

Let me give a real world example, as much as I can.

This feels a lot like a 'slippery slope' argument to me, Richard.

To me this is a pretty straightforward thing: Default to "open" unless there's a really good reason to not be open (for example, the privacy of a third party).

Take a look at how kernel patches are handled - generally open, but in the case of Spectre/Meltdown, those patches needed to be handled in a closed manner until all OS vendors had an opportunity to address the issues - "responsible disclosure" overrode the need for openness.

That doesn't mean that because there's occasionally a need to do things behind closed doors, all kernel patches are handled behind closed doors. The process defaults to open unless there's a compelling reason to not be open.

The same principle applies here.

I wouldn't describe my points as a 'slippery slope' argument, more like the 'wrong slope' argument If the issue being presented to the Board is one that can be handled "in the open" in the way that you and others are advocating, then I argue that the issue shouldn't be presented to the Board as something for it to decide. We support contributors who take the initiative, and when that is not an option we have the project mailinglist and countless other places and means for such things to be debated and decided. The Board exist to be able to make the decisions that can't be handled in such an open fashion. And thus, we require the trust of the Project in order to be able to do our job with the discretion required of it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, 2 Sep 2018 at 00:15, Vincent Untz wrote:

Le samedi 01 septembre 2018, à 21:07 -0700, Richard Brown a écrit :

...

If the issue being presented to the Board is one that can be handled "in the open" in the way that you and others are advocating, then I argue that the issue shouldn't be presented to the Board as something for it to decide.

We support contributors who take the initiative, and when that is not an option we have the project mailinglist and countless other places and means for such things to be debated and decided.

The Board exist to be able to make the decisions that can't be handled in such an open fashion. And thus, we require the trust of the Project in order to be able to do our job with the discretion required of it.

This is true when this is when it comes to handling a conflict, but the board does more than that: for instance, it has an influence on the budget, or the organization of oSC, and more.

What I understand that people are pointing out is that these other topics do not need as much discretion, and transparency is expected there.

The way this can be approached, and that is pretty close to what I feel the current board is doing, is that by default, topics should be considered as "to be documented publicly" unless there's a good reason to not do so -- and I'm being vague here on purpose as you can't predict what topic may not be appropriate to detail in minutes; I trust the board to take the right decision.

The minutes that have been shared lately already offer some pretty good transparency (although votes are not included -- which I'm fine with). If anything, I feel the board has actually been too transparent about the conflicts in the minutes as it's something I would simply not document publicly as it can influence the conflict resolution negatively.

Vincent

The only topic I have been debating here is whether or not the Board should include the details of whom voted for what Of course the Board should minute what it discusses, I do not disagree on that point with you one iota and I would defend any suggestion otherwise as vociferously as I am defending the need to note include the details of votes in our minutes. That said, like you, I fear we've been TOO transparent in areas like conflict resolution from time to time, but the fact we err on the side of openness should be somewhat reassuring to the Project. But sharing the details of whom voted for what is a step that I, personally, think is far too far - partially because it strips the Board from the collective responsibility that has given it the freedom to both learn from its mistakes and to take risks like occasionally being too open in its minutes. However, returning to your point about the Board doing "more than just conflict resolution" - This may be true, heck we sure seem busier than when you were Chairman ;) but the nature and scope of the work has evolved since your time. Taking your examples, Budget influence is far less than in the past - because the role of Treasurer we created has succeeded in it's intended role of taking a lot of that day-to-day noise away from the Board. Therefore, when the Board is now discussing budgets, it's almost always (and in my eyes should always) be in a form of 'escalation mode' - discussing topics which our Treasurer or others in the Project cannot handle comfortably. Every example I can think of could easily be described as a "conflict" between the desires of the Project and the desires of our sponsors. And ergo, those incidents are some which require heaps of discretion and benefit from the obscured voting which we currently practice in the Board. oSC influence is another example you cited. It's true that in the past the Board was very hands on with the organisation of oSC. I've been campaigning hard within the Board to stop that practice as it is beyond the intended remit of the Board. Earlier in the thread I gave the example of openSUSE Asia as a fine example of how the Project could be doing such things. We have this list, and opensuse-marketing, and a growing body of experienced oSC volunteers. I work hard to ensure that any question about organisational minutiae or any other aspect of oSC, or in general any topic at all, that could be discussed and documented in the open, is NOT discussed by the Board at our meetings. That is not our job and never has been. In cases like that I've been working hard to push the people raising such things to do so openly with the project, and on one or two occasions I have strongly advocated to the Board that we should reject the questions asked of us, because they're not for us to decide. The Project should be able to do and decide things without the Board. We were never conceptualised as a gate to block or permit what our contributors wanted to do. The power of deciding what we do, how we do it, when we do it, lies with our contributors, not with the Board. The Board is there to serve a purpose when that typical open collaborative means of this project doesn't work. When conflicts are abound and when discretion is required. When something needs to be handled delicately and yet still decisively in the name of the Project. Those are the functions the Board exists, and so to risk repeating myself, if the topic is one which can easily be handled openly and could be wholly minuted openly without any discretion required, it's a topic I'd personally like to see handled elsewhere then the Board. We've got enough ugly stuff to deal with, and the Project has better means for doing and deciding stuff openly. For example, I'd love to start seeing this list being used more proactively by others for postulating and discussing far more new ideas for the Project, and then the collective readers of this list taking the initiative and acting on them. The Boards minutes and the debates around them should be a minority activity of this list, not the majority it seems to have been lately. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, 2 Sep 2018 at 19:49, Ana Martínez wrote:

- We don't manage to agree and need to vote to decide In this case I accept and respect the decision because it was democratically voted, but I do not agree on it. That means that if someone ask me, both privately and publicly, I will still defend my opinion. Richard says that decisions made collectively are defended collectively. I don't know if the board decided this in the past, in which case it should be documented somewhere and re-discuss when new members join. But I have never agreed that I should defend something I don't agree with.

When you joined the Board, you joined a decision making body that works as a Team. I expect any team member to support the decisions made of that team. Equally, I expect a well rounded team to also be supportive and open with dissent and complexity in their decision-making. I have no problem with the diversity of thought among the Board being public knowledge, but I do have a problem when that transitions from sharing the fact the board contains more than one opinion, to Board members publicly undermining the decision made by the collective whole group. This is one of the benefits that comes with the details of whom voted for what being private. As a Board we could share both the majority and minority views on any decisions. But as soon as names are attached the whole affair takes an air of a childish popularity contest, which detracts from the Boards ability to make decisions in awkward circumstances - which is the only kind of decisions the Board should be making. Therefore I continue to strongly disagree with many of your views here, and fear if they gained acceptance the Board's ability to function in the roles it exists for will be grossly undermined. We might get fuzzy feelings of self satisfaction by being more open and bragging about our individual decisions, but we risk turning the Board into a spectator sport or reality show drama, and not the only body the Project has to turn to in order make decisions when all other means fail it.

After that many answers in this email thread I think the board should discuss in the next meeting if we should make public who voted what (I'll ensure this happens).

I think it would be grossly inappropriate for the Board to discuss in private something we have collectively proven to be able to discuss in public. The fact that we're still having this conversation here means that any move to discuss this in the Board tonight would seem to be to be both hypocritical in the goal for more transparency, and the view that the Board meetings should be focused on topics which cannot be discussed openly. Therefore I will be objecting to any suggestion that we discuss this at tonight's meeting. We should keep talking about this here.

As others already gave their opinion, here is mine: When the board doesn't agree on something, but votes about it, who voted what should be public except if there is a good reason to not make it public (the reason should be included in the minutes). That includes for example, that we are resolving a conflict for which people wrote as expecting anonymity and that it is discussed in private.

I agree with your principle. My point is, the Board should only be deciding on topics where there is a good reason not to make it public.

openSUSE is not a company but a community (as Richard and Knurpht have pointed out). In a company it may happen that the company interests are not the same ones as the employees interests. But in the openSUSE board we are just trying to take the best decisions for the community which represent what the community wants. This in my opinion means that the decisions we make should be popular. Otherwise we are taking the wrong decisions.

Ana, our responsibility as a Board to make decisions in circumstances where a popular vote would be inappropriate. Taking decisions regarding conflicting members, rejecting/establishing relationships with other Projects and companies, and spending the money from our existing sponsors, always has the risk of being unpopular. We have the Board so the Project has people who can make unpopular, but trusted decisions. If the Board's function is only to make popular decisions, then we might as well not have a Board and put everything to a popular vote. And such an option is not viable in many of those cases. I'm happy to take from this lesson the collective decision that the Board will make less decisions and I will support any effort in the Board to push back from requests for it to make decisions and instead encourage more public debate and public decision making. But I outright reject your suggestion that the popularity of a decision should be a primary factor of the Boards decision making process. Such a suggestion would be particularly disruptive in our role as conflict resolvers - popular people can still be assholes, and the Board is who the Project needs to rely on to deal with such individuals. They shouldn't be shielded by their popularity. In the case of sponsorships, there is also the factor of who our sponsors are willing and enable to entrust with the decisions on how the Project spends their money. I can imagine many of our sponsors would be uncomfortable with the idea of their money being up for a public vote. Investigating the feasibility of such an idea might be a topic worthy of discussing in tonights meeting. Regards, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 4 Sep 2018 at 12:05, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

Richard, when you where appointed by SUSE as the chairman of the openSUSE board, you joined a community of people who work as a team.

As you well know, I was part of that community long before my involvement in it's Board, as both an elected member and then it's Chairman. I feel your dismissal of that undermines your points below regarding our guiding principles, especially those relating to "respect for others and their work"

Our guiding principles expect from everyone, including you, to value openness. To value transparency of the decision making & collaboration processes, transparency of communication. The same guiding principles encourage you to _listen_ to arguments and to address problems in a constructive and open way.

I personally don't see how painting everything in black and white helps to bring this exchange of ideas to a collaborative end. Or how behaving this way is reconcilable with our guiding principles.

There are many people in this thread who try to address the gray areas in between, who acknowledge the fact that there is something in between "fuzzy feelings" and "reality show drama". Please open your mind, that is what this community, and the principles it's founded on, expect from everyone.

And I believe throughout this thread I have shown a repeated effort to listen and understand. Of course there is significant amount of grey areas, and this discussion has most certainly helped evolve my position. I wouldn't describe my current views as simple black and white, and you can see examples of that in much of the mail you neglected to quote. Specifically the areas where I state "I have no problem with the diversity of thought among the Board being public knowledge, but I do have a problem when that transitions from sharing the fact the board contains more than one opinion, to Board members publicly undermining the decision made by the collective whole group." "As a Board we could share both the majority and minority views on any decisions." "I'm happy to take from this lesson the collective decision that the Board will make less decisions and I will support any effort in the Board to push back from requests for it to make decisions and instead encourage more public debate and public decision making." Each of the above statements can be directly attributed to my _listening_ to the arguments and addressing them. Regardless, I have principles which I both personally hold, and that I feel responsible for upholding in order to preserve the environment the Board fulfils its function. I have striven hard throughout this discussion to communicate my views respectfully and thoroughly, while considering and addressing any opposing views. So, how about we try our collective best to avoid ad hominem attacks, and continue to discuss the issues at hand? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 4 Sep 2018 at 14:03, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

Maybe I'm a bit too sensitive. Everything you say afterward feels like the part of the sentence before the "but". I like you, but...

Maybe you are, but we're talking it out, and I think that's a good thing. I would rather you have seen everything "afterward" as a sincere effort on my part to express the nuance and detail I feel on the topic. Like you say, this is a topic with lots of grey, so even when I express a strong feeling on the topic there SHOULD be some 'but' to counter-balance and contextualise my view.

...

"I have no problem with the diversity of thought among the Board being public knowledge, but I do have a problem when that transitions from sharing the fact the board contains more than one opinion, to Board members publicly undermining the decision made by the collective whole group."

So how do you imagine board members can make their diverse thoughts public knowledge without undermining the decision made by the collective? Of the recent example, what would you wish would have been done differently?

In an ideal world, in retrospect, I would have liked the minutes of the meeting to reflect the Board as a whole. Something along the lines of "The Board decided agree to the sponsorship request, but there were opposing views."

...

"As a Board we could share both the majority and minority views on any decisions."

Sounds good. How do you imagine this would look like? Just the votes or a written "minority report" that summarizes the discussion? I guess this could turn into much work for you peepz. Previous boards had public meetings where you could listen in or see a log and see how a decision was reached, that would be one way to know what's going on.

We've done minutes before where we included a summary of the debate, sometimes minuting the debate even when no conclusion came out of it. (eg. https://en.opensuse.org/Archive:Board_meeting_2018-07-17) I'd be much happier with seeing the minutes cover not only the decision and a summary of the logic that led the majority to such a decision, but also a summary of the logic that led to any minority wishing for a counter decision. I think that would be a really good thing to see for those few cases where the Board is not unanimous in a decision. In the absence of such minutes, I'd also be happy with Board members sharing details of any debate or dissent from within the Board, but again, in the same vein as we would include in the minutes. Eg. When the topic of sponsorship of the football team came up, any Board member could and perhaps should have felt free to share the fact that the decision was not unanimous and could have even gone so far to describe the opposing views. This is something I've done myself from time to time. There has been times I've announced Board decisions with the -project that I wholeheartedly disagree with, and there has also been separates times I've shared details of how not everyone in the Board agreed with a decision which I personally voted for. We, the Board, have a collective responsibility to the Project, and we, the Board, should do a good job of detailing what we, the Board thought about any decision we made on behalf of the Project. But it should be _we_, the Board, not Richard, Ana, Gertjan, Sarah, Christian, and Simon as individuals. We need to work together as a team. This is what I mean by collective 'ownership ' of both the decision and dissent. This is especially important because of the nature of the decisions we make often being ugly ones.

...

"I'm happy to take from this lesson the collective decision that the Board will make less decisions and I will support any effort in the Board to push back from requests for it to make decisions and instead encourage more public debate and public decision making."

Which are the recent decisions you think you should have pushed back? How many percent do you guess would get off your plate?

https://en.opensuse.org/Archive:Board_meeting_2018-06-05 - Membership; I think the changes to the Membership scheme should be more thoroughly discussed by the Project - Conference committee , news.opensuse.org license , projects and events sponsored by openSUSE are all good examples of the Board pushing back things the Board shouldn't be dealing with. - oSC might be another example of the Board sticking its nose in to a topic further than it should, though ultimately we made no decision there, so you could justify it under the Board's gudiance role. I think this sponsorship one COULD have been something which, instead of being escalated to the Board from the marketing team could have instead, possibly, been discussed here. Such an idea would require consent of the parties involved, which I am currently unsure of, but in retrospect I think I would have preferred dealing with the awkwardness of investigating that, rather than this existential crisis ;)

And another thought, don't you think that defining the boards body of work so narrow on conflict resolution would take something away from the project? I mean yes if there are "existing governance structures" everything is fine and dandy but what if there aren't? Or are there no such decisions currently in your opinion?

Conflict resolution has most certainly been the primary topic of the majority of Board meetings since the last election, yes. I think we (as a whole collective Project) fallen into a bit of a trap of leaning on the Board's ability to be decision makers of last resort a little too often I'm hopeful that this now epic debate has two outcomes. I hope it encourages more cases of more contributors taking more initiative and use this -project mailing-list to propose, decide, and do more things in the interest to the Project. And I'm hopeful that it encourages the Board to continue to push back from deciding on things which it really shouldn't. While I described the examples above as "push back", you could equally argue is the Board acting in it's role of guidance, support, and facilitating decision making processes - they are decisions which the Board or others have raised for the Board to decide, but really they are topics which _the Project_ should decide. I think it's healthy for the Project that the Board isn't on a power trip and isn't grabbing every opportunity it can to decide on anything on behalf of the Project. And I think encouraging that to continue is a role the Board should really push at every opportunity. Not just because it gives the Board less work, but because we're a Project which rises or falls on the _actions_ of our contributors, not the _decisions_ of our Board -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

...

We, the Board, have a collective responsibility to the Project, and we, the Board, should do a good job of detailing what we, the Board thought about any decision we made on behalf of the Project.

But it should be _we_, the Board, not Richard, Ana, Gertjan, Sarah, Christian, and Simon as individuals. We need to work together as a team.

So that description of the two "logics" in the minutes would not include the names people who follow it because you think it is not team-work if one of that individuals has a different _public_ opinion while supporting the decision of the majority?

Yes, it would not include the names of either the people agreeing nor disagreeing with the final decision of the Board

Isn't that the definition of team, supporting each other even in case of hard times (like disagreement)? I, as a non board member, wouldn't conceive hiding this as anything other than obfuscation of facts. And weak team behavior.

And what about the teamwork between the board and the rest of the community? Aren't we also a team? Or are we outside, not to be trusted to understand and differentiate between you as individuals and the majorities you form?

The Board should only be making decisions when there are complex factors with nuance and discretion, with details which we cannot share publicly. So yes, I do not expect the community at large to be able to understand and differentiate in such circumstances. They will not be equipped with all of the information to do so. So they'll be judging the decisions of the individuals with half the information available. And if we could share all of the details with the Project in the first place, then I continue to argue that the Board shouldn't be deciding in those cases, so the question as to whether or not the votes should be public are somewhat defunct. As an aside - I'd like to point out that so far all votes by the openSUSE membership has been private, and great care has been taken to ensure that this is always the case and we only use tools that support that workflow. Are you advocating for making any and all Membership votes also public? In Board elections are Board members not to be trusted we knowing who voted for us? Shouldn't other Members know who voted for whom? In other elections are our fellow Members not to be trusted in knowing who voted for the latest guiding principles and such? To quote Men in Black "A person is smart. People are dumb and panicky [...] and you know it".

...

This is especially important because of the nature of the decisions we make often being ugly ones.

Ugly decisions, like you have described canceling membership or conflict resolution, often need a different approach for sure. Some situations call for unanimous and swift decisions that leave little room for debate. Everybody is aware of that I guess.

What I really don't understand, help me out please, is what stops you from deploying the appropriate individual measure to two complete different problems? Canceling membership versus voting on sponsorship for a football team. Why can't you come out with force in the former and explain to the rest of us what's going on to the fullest extent in the latter?

Because, like I have illuded to, I do not feel comfortable about sharing all of the details of a situation which was escalated to the Board privately by others elsewhere in the Project, and so I'm treating the details of that request with the same discretion as I treat the other discreet requests made of the Board. We always minute as much as we can, but I'd be uncomfortable betraying the trust of the escalating contributor by sharing all of the details without agreeing with them first. Or to put it another way - given the typical purposes of the Board, I think it makes sense for the default setting to be discretion and privacy. If there are cases where the Board is dealing with something that could be dealt with with the kind of openness you're advocating, then I would argue that is something that shouldn't be discussed at the Board level and instead should be discussed in an open venue, like this or any other openSUSE mailinglist.

Now to construct an even more evil situation. What measure would you deploy if you cancel a membership when you are the only one voting for it (with your veto) or a 50:50 split of votes?

We've had a 50:50 split of votes on such debates before - these decisions remained deadlocked until a clearer majority developed. It wasn't pretty, but there is no comfortable option in a Board of 6 people with each member having an equal vote. I have never executed my power of veto. I would expect any execution of my veto to by VERY clearly minuted. As Chairman I expect absolutely zero privacy for any such cases. In a case of the Chairman's veto overruling the majority of the Board, I would expect (and strongly encourage) that the Board use their power to request SUSE replace me as Chairman.

...

...

Which are the recent decisions you think you should have pushed back? How many percent do you guess would get off your plate?

https://en.opensuse.org/Archive:Board_meeting_2018-06-05 [...]

Thank you for the list of things, it really helps to understand your point. I agree that most of these should not be concerns of the board. The question is why are they and why do people think they should be?

I have a few speculative theories. Because people have gotten into the habit of emailing board@opensuse.org instead of opensuse-project@opensuse.org? Because Board members are human and have developed the habit of raising their bright ideas in the context of Board meetings instead of opensuse-project@opensuse.org instead of other lists? It's a double edged sword - I think it's a good thing we've got active Boards full of inspired and inspiring individuals, it does help get the jobs done the Board is meant to do. But the Board has always been documented in a way that made obvious that there is a risk of overreaching it's scope and in doing so risks impeding individuals from the Project to drive things forward in the way they should be able to. I'm quite happy for this debate because at the very least it gives any brave soul who's read this far a chance to consider the views on this topic, and wherever they may lie on the spectrum of feeling on the topic, if they feel something, I think the Project will benefit.

...

...

And another thought, don't you think that defining the boards body of work so narrow on conflict resolution would take something away from the project?

Conflict resolution has most certainly been the primary topic of the majority of Board meetings since the last election, yes.

I guess there is no debate about that. Does it have to be though?

There is no one else to deal with conflict resolution, and similar discreet escalations, but there are other people (the community-at-large) to deal with other stuff. Given that, and taking into account our shared view that if we look at most recent examples of what is put on the Board's plate that "should not be concerns of the Board" then I think yes, it should be that way. The Board should limit itself to just doing stuff which no one else can do. For everything else, there's Mastercard..um.. I mean the mailinglists, forums, IRC, discord, etc, and the thousands of contributors who inhabit the Project on those platforms. Though I'm open to any suggestions of what you think the Board should be doing besides dealing with such escalations - hey, that's why we publish the minutes! :)

...

Project which rises or falls on the _actions_ of our contributors, not the _decisions_ of our Board

Au contraire. We rise and fall on the _actions_ of all contributors, _including_ the board :-)

Touche ;) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

El mar., 4 sept. 2018 a las 14:03, Henne Vogelsang () escribió:

Sounds good. How do you imagine this would look like? Just the votes or a written "minority report" that summarizes the discussion? I guess this could turn into much work for you peepz. Previous boards had public meetings where you could listen in or see a log and see how a decision was reached, that would be one way to know what's going on.

That's really interesting. Does this mean that previously the board meetings were completely open and everybody could join? How this exactly worked? Was there any information that could not be completely open discussed? In that case, what kind of things and how this worked with the open meetings? Do you (or someone else) have any clue why this changed? Regards, Ana -- Ana María Martínez Gómez https://anamaria.martinezgomez.name -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hey, On 04.09.2018 15:07, Ana Martínez wrote:

El mar., 4 sept. 2018 a las 14:03, Henne Vogelsang () escribió:

...

Sounds good. How do you imagine this would look like? Just the votes or a written "minority report" that summarizes the discussion? I guess this could turn into much work for you peepz. Previous boards had public meetings where you could listen in or see a log and see how a decision was reached, that would be one way to know what's going on.

That's really interesting. Does this mean that previously the board meetings were completely open and everybody could join? How this exactly worked?

Yes we had public IRC meetings. First two, one Board meeting and one Project meeting. Later, because it was a bit much and we couldn't generate enough interest, they melted into one project meeting. At some point in time this also got dropped because we as a project couldn't generate enough interest for it anymore.

Was there any information that could not be completely open discussed? In that case, what kind of things and how this worked with the open meetings?

We simply had a subsequent private meeting in another invite only channel. Where we would talk about things that we rather not discuss with everybody. Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Op dinsdag 4 september 2018 16:57:58 CEST schreef Andrew Wafaa:

Purple with pink spots!

I am completely confused as to what on earth is going on here. Trying to play catch-up on this thread after being on holiday and various travel, my immediate comment is WTF! Since when are we *expected* to express personal opinions?

As a previously elected member of the Board I can say, as Vincent has previously mentioned, the current Board is by far one of the most transparent. I genuinely am at a loss for words at the fact that pitch forks are being sharpened because personal opinions haven't been shared. As with all bikeshedding the thread has been derailed over minutiae that have almost no bearing on the topic. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing, in fact it's healthy; the problem to me is that we're not being constructive.

Is it too much to ask that people take a break, have a drink of something wholesome, relax a little and then continue having fun? This sort of hysteria is not productive and most certainly isn't helpful in having fun or anything else.

Thanks for stepping in, Andrew. I was writing a "Can we please ..." email, this one's much better, it's how I feel exactly.

On Tue, 4 Sep 2018 at 15:11, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

Hey,

On 04.09.2018 15:07, Ana Martínez wrote:

...

El mar., 4 sept. 2018 a las 14:03, Henne Vogelsang

() escribió:

...

Sounds good. How do you imagine this would look like? Just the votes or a written "minority report" that summarizes the discussion? I guess this could turn into much work for you peepz. Previous boards had public meetings where you could listen in or see a log and see how a decision was reached, that would be one way to know what's going on.

That's really interesting. Does this mean that previously the board meetings were completely open and everybody could join? How this exactly worked?

Yes we had public IRC meetings. First two, one Board meeting and one Project meeting. Later, because it was a bit much and we couldn't generate enough interest, they melted into one project meeting. At some point in time this also got dropped because we as a project couldn't generate enough interest for it anymore.

...

Was there any information that could not be completely open discussed? In that case, what kind of things and how this worked with the open meetings?

We simply had a subsequent private meeting in another invite only channel. Where we would talk about things that we rather not discuss with everybody.

Henne

-- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit.

- Mike Tyson

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Andrew Wafaa wrote:

Purple with pink spots!

I am completely confused as to what on earth is going on here. Trying to play catch-up on this thread after being on holiday and various travel, my immediate comment is WTF! Since when are we *expected* to express personal opinions?

Isn't that the whole reason someone offers to and is elected for board membership? His or her person?

I genuinely am at a loss for words at the fact that pitch forks are being sharpened because personal opinions haven't been shared.

Umm, in my understanding this thread is about whether it should be expected/permitted/encouraged for board members to share their votes with the community. To enable "trust is good, control is better".

As with all bikeshedding the thread has been derailed over minutiae that have almost no bearing on the topic. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing, in fact it's healthy; the problem to me is that we're not being constructive.

Proposal - add something like this to our guidelines - * an active board member is encouraged to share his or her vote on any topic with the community whenever he or she feels it is appropriate or desirable. In particular when asked to do so by the community. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (17.4°C) member, openSUSE Heroes. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 4 Sep 2018 at 12:53, Ana Martínez wrote:

In our Wiki page[1] does not say anything about supporting decisions a board member don't agree with. But it does say that the board should document decisions and policies. When things are not documented neither discussed, it is normal that your expectations and mines are different.

The Board should document decisions and policies. 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. Everything we've ever documented about "The Board" speaks of the Board as a team which is accountable as a single unit. Hence the rule that _the Board_ can be removed by 20% of the members requesting it. Everything in our rules implies the Board should be acting as a collective unit, and is collectively accountable. Nothing I can find in our rules implies that Board members should be held individually accountable. Hence, my opinion at the topics being discussed in this thread that the Board should act in accordance to those principles.

I object to not discuss it.

From this thread I get that: - Community wants the votes to be public

Some of the community wants the votes to be public. There are others who do not.

- I want them to be public - You want them to be private - I am not sure what the other board members want

I would like to know what the others in the board think. More information is always a good thing.

I would also like to know what the others in the Board feel. Given the discussion so far has been done wholly in public, I believe that those other Board members should engage in this topic publicly also. I have always disagreed with the idea that the Board deciding things in private which could be decided in public. Like our wiki page says "community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project". This is one of those mechanisms, and taking the discussion on this topic privately now would be closing the stable door after the horse is long bolted.

...

I agree with your principle. My point is, the Board should only be deciding on topics where there is a good reason not to make it public.

What was the good reason for the board to decide on the football team and not to make it public?

Because, unlike the vast amount of other sponsorships which the Project decides upon without the Board's direct involvement, the unusual nature of this one led to the marketing team (who normally decide on sponsorships) asking the Board for our opinion.

...

We have the Board so the Project has people who can make unpopular, but trusted decisions.

I disagree. I believe the Board should make popular decisions, which represent what the community wants.

From our Wiki[1]: Facilitate decision making processes where needed. Facilitate decision is not the same as decide and it also doesn't include anything about unpopular decisions.

Indeed, so on the topic that decided this, I think there is a case to be made that the Board could consider suggesting a way to allow the marketing team to decide about sponsorships without involving the Board. I would fully support such an effort. But without such a way, we end up being the only process left And that process in which the Board makes decisions is one which doesn't make those votes public, because the Board is designed and structured for making decisions only in cases where no other process or community mechanisms exist. The Board should only be making decisions _as_a_last_resort_. When that is the case, we need to have the freedom to make those decisions with private voting (but public minuting). As many decisions as possible should be made by people other than the Board - like our wiki says "community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project" - the Board is there for when those community mechanisms don't exist, or fail to work for the Project.

...

If the Board's function is only to make popular decisions, then we might as well not have a Board and put everything to a popular vote. And such an option is not viable in many of those cases.

I really like the idea for the cases in which it is possible.

I really think those cases should be none of the Board's business, and should be handled elsewhere in the Project. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

This thread, and the debate about votes, actually moved -- in the most part -- to some reasonable suggestions pro and con. Some exceptions, of course, such as the person's who have taken the stance of "I have made up my mind way ahead of time, and I will go to ridiculous lengths and absurd examples to defend my position, even though I refuse to give any open-minded thought to the debate." Which, of course, is sad, especially when some of them are my personal "openSUSE Heroes". However, as I said, the debate is taking some actual Adult, Thoughtful, Open-Minded direction, as well. I especially thank Jim Henderson for stepping in hear, since he has some of the most Reasonable responses and suggestions to offer. For the past several days, I have been planning to step back in -- since the thread improved -- and compose a Very Carefully Thought Out response to some of the points raised here. In the meantime, Jim has stepped in and made pretty much all the Reasonable points I was planning to make. I do not say it is "do or die, all votes must be made public". But, there really has not been one single Reasonable and Realistic point raised to negate the move to defaulting to "Votes made public unless there is a good, valid reason not to." Not one. No, not ONE! There are many things that absolutely *must* remain private. For a good example, the Board reporting in the Minutes that it was necessary to mediate between a couple of our valuable contributors, that was important information for us to know, but at the same time: Not releasing the information about who voted for what, nor the details of the mediation, nor the information about Who the contributors are/were or what the issue is remained Private, as it should. We now understand some of the difficult work our Board Members are doing for us as a result of the information as it was released, without the disruptive information being allowed to come out and cause harm. I believe that the Board Members whom we have elected (and the appointed one, as well) can be thoroughly trusted to decide such things, and I believe most of the Community would agree we have that much Trust in our Board Members. So, I think it is Imperative that the default should be: * Make the Votes Public *unless there is a good, valid, reasonable reason NOT to, and; * If a Member of the Board decided the votes on a certain issue should NOT be made public, they should raise their point to the other Board Members. The Board would then decide if it is a Reasonable objection, or not, and if the objection passes the "Reasonable" test, than the vote should not be made public. Seems to me that would be an Adult, Principled, Reasonable approach. ... and, thanks again, Jim, for your well-expressed thoughts on this subject. -- -Gerry Makaro openSUSE Member openSUSE Forum Moderator openSUSE Contributor aka Fraser_Bell on the Forums, OBS, IRC, and mail at openSUSE.org Fraser-Bell on Github -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 09/05/2018 04:10 PM, Simon Lees wrote:

Ok, so we are getting somewhere here, we mostly agree, so my reason for saying exactly what you are except with private by default is one of simplicity and practicality, on the vast majority of things that the board deals with we reach a consensus without a vote which really leaves us in the position where 90% of the things we vote on and don't reach a consensus have a good valid reasonable reason to keep the votes public,

...

...

if a board member can't say why they voted for something because it would require making info public then they shouldn't have to say what they voted for.

Absolutely on that last point, as long as you are referring to reasonably restricted info. BTW: I personally have enjoyed your contribution to this discussion, as your comments and points of view have been made within reason. +BTW: I vote yes LOL -- -Gerry Makaro openSUSE Member openSUSE Forum Moderator openSUSE Contributor aka Fraser_Bell on the Forums, OBS, IRC, and mail at openSUSE.org Fraser-Bell on Github -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Perhaps all of this might inspire me, Jim Henderson, and others with our Point of View on this subject to run for Board Membership in next spring's elections, making this part of our platforms. ... and perhaps, you other members who are in favour of this, might make it a point to elect candidates who will at least promise to take this additional Free and Open Source Step to Transparency, or at least take it to a General Vote of the Membership. -- -Gerry Makaro openSUSE Member openSUSE Forum Moderator openSUSE Contributor aka Fraser_Bell on the Forums, OBS, IRC, and mail at openSUSE.org Fraser-Bell on Github -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 05 Sep 2018 16:01:43 +0930, Simon Lees wrote:

In reality what some people in this thread need to understand is that you elect the board to deal with complex tricky issues that are not well suited to being dealt with by the community as a whole as such alot of the detail often remains private so the project doesn't need to go through crazy mailing list threads and member votes on every issue. I think that if every board vote becomes public then every remotely controversial discussion is going to come out on the mailing list and then there is really very little point in having an openSUSE board in its current form.

I for one do understand that, Simon - but I think the board also needs to understand that when it asks the membership to trust it, the board also needs to trust the membership, too - that trust is a two-way street. One question that this paragraph raises for me - does a new board member have access to information about past decisions that have been made (ie, is there a set of private minutes) so there's continuity and history of why decisions were made within the board? Or is that information not recorded, and thus lost? Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 06 Sep 2018 08:49:37 +0930, Simon Lees wrote:

This is one of the main reasons why Richard doesn't have a 2 year term, he has been around for long enough to remember most things, I think some previous boards have kept even less detailed minutes then we are at the moment and if we really want to know something we sometimes ask members of previous boards.

It's good to have that, but if ($DEITY forbid) Richard gets hit by a bus, there does need to be some succession planning and continuity planning to ensure that tribal knowledge isn't lost. Not to mention that memory is an imperfect way to keep records. Eyewitness reports are considered very unreliable in most instances. :) That's not a question of trust, BTW, that's just another part of "human nature". :) Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 06 Sep 2018 01:54:00 +0200, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

IIRC Like in the forums, I had access to previous board data when starting as a board member. We have a closed ML, minutes have been published before, maybe not on the project ML. Whenever I asked for history I had no knowledge of, I was provided with proper information by the other board members.

That is good to know, thank you.

Like I've writen in another post on this ML, the board is working on this, let the minutes here be an example. But, like any other team in the project we cannot just go for one suggestion and make that universal truth, we need time to find out what can go public and what can't, what the community consensus is , it's a learning process for us too. Please be aware that all of the board members are looking at / participating in this thread and expressing their own thoughts. That's transparency, isn't it ?

I do appreciate the entire board's contribution to this discussion. Transparency and openness are difficult because we're only human. But as my dad always used to say, actions speak louder than words - so while discussion is good, the proof for me will be to see what the actions are the board takes as the outcome from this discussion. I trust that the board will make a good call, and that the input of the community will be seen in their actions.

FWIW, one of the things I like about the openSUSE Project, the community, is that we can have these discussions. In the end we'll all benefit.

My 232432 cents.

Totally agreed. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Jim Henderson wrote:

Richard, you know that I trust the board. But that said, there's a question of accountability - "trust, but verify" is important for the membership to know that the board is doing what they were elected to do.

In order to make an informed decision when someone runs for a second term on the board, how is anyone to know that the person they're voting for is representing their interests if the decisions they make (or votes they cast) aren't open to public review?

Thanks for putting it so succinctly, that's exactly what I tried to say a few days back. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (16.6°C) member, openSUSE Heroes -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 04 Sep 2018 15:40:29 +0200, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

Sensitive info IMNSHO should stay private.

And nobody is advocating for changing that, at least that I've seen. I've specifically said that when there are third party privacy concerns involved, it's appropriate for the details to stay private.

Another thing that comes to mind when voting is public, is that ( also from experience ) there's a fair chance that the community will not discuss board decicions, but the voting behaviour of it's individual members.

Which is fine. If the community doesn't feel like a member of the board is properly representing their interests or delivering on their campaign promises or stated goals for running for the board, that would seem to be a fair discussion for the community to have, no? Like I said, default to being open, except for cases where not being open is specifically warranted (and can be noted in the notes - like "discussed dismissal of problematic member of the project; voted and decided to take action. Specific information withheld for third party privacy reasons." As I said, we see this in LKML on occasion - with the Spectre and Meltdown exploits is the most obvious example. That group defaults to being open with their information except when they can't due to third party privacy reasons (Intel's in those instances) or to follow responsible disclosure policies. But the policy doesn't prohibit Linus calling another developer a moron for doing something that he (Linus) feels was a stupid thing to do and calling attention to bad decisions made by developers on the team. What's more, while that does make the press when it happens, it doesn't break the development process. The argument has been made that that policy has made for a stronger kernel, not a weaker one. I would argue that the same thing is true here - having the board be open about the things that they vote on makes the board stronger, not weaker. But what I'm hearing (no disrespect to any of the board here) is that the board doesn't think the membership can "handle the truth". I think we are more than capable of handling that information. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 05 Sep 2018 22:43:31 +0200, Christian Boltz wrote:

Hello,

Am Mittwoch, 5. September 2018, 00:21:34 CEST schrieb Jim Henderson:

...

On Tue, 04 Sep 2018 15:40:29 +0200, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

...

...

Another thing that comes to mind when voting is public, is that ( also from experience ) there's a fair chance that the community will not discuss board decicions, but the voting behaviour of it's individual members.

Which is fine. If the community doesn't feel like a member of the board is properly representing their interests or delivering on their campaign promises or stated goals for running for the board, that would seem to be a fair discussion for the community to have, no?

That's a tricky question - whatever I answer will paint me into a corner ;-)

:)

You _and_ Gertjan have good arguments, but sadly we can't have both ways at the same time. Maybe my answer below will at least ensure that I paint myself into the green corner ;-)

Well, it seems to me that the board is asking the community to trust it - but I think trust needs to be a two-way street, and the board needs to trust the community as well.

There's a "little" difference between keeping technical issues private vs. keeping board topics/discussions which often involve humans private. (Hint: The reason for keeping the Spectre exploits/patches private is _not_ to protect the humans who designed the "broken" CPU.)

True, but my point remains - there was a good reason to keep those exploits secret while the updates were being worked on. Similarly, there are instances where it makes sense to keep a board vote private. But in both instances, defaulting to "open" is, in my mind, a totally valid reason.

...

But the policy doesn't prohibit Linus calling another developer a moron for doing something that he (Linus) feels was a stupid thing to do and calling attention to bad decisions made by developers on the team.

I've only read a few of Linus' rants, but most of those I've read were beyond our guiding principles, so Linus might be at risk of receiving a formal warning if he ever posts such a rant on an openSUSE mailinglist ;-) Yes, I can imagine that lots of people, including the press, might have lots of fun reading such a warning, and the one sending it will probably end up in a funny[tm] shitstorm ;-)

With all due respect to Gertjan (who is a fellow forums admin), his responses to Brian were in a similar vein to some of Linus' rants at other developers (perhaps a bit tamer), yet he doesn't seem to have been given any sort of formal warning here.

Back to the topic: Complaining about bad code is of course [more than] ok, but it should be done without personal attacks ("this code is bad" vs. "you are an idiot")

I don't fundamentally disagree with that assessment, but this is going down a rabbit hole that is steering away from the actual topic. I was providing that as an example of how to do "open with some limitations" properly - the specific details of how it's handled on LKML vis-a-vis Linus yelling at developers for doing "stupid" things is really beside the point.

...

I would argue that the same thing is true here - having the board be open about the things that they vote on makes the board stronger, not weaker.

I'll give you two answers on this ;-)

1) Personally, I don't have a problem with making my votes public, even if a specific vote might be unpopular or in hindsight turn out to be wrong.

Good. :) We're all human, and nobody should ever be afraid to be wrong. We all make mistakes, and we all screw up. If we don't, we're not taking risks and not having experiences that we can grow from.

2) The problem is that making my votes public also means you can guess (or even know, if I'm the "1" in a "5:1" vote) how the other board members voted. I understand the arguments of those board members who think that having the votes public would come with side effects (like voting for what people will like instead of what makes sense, or discussions about the voting behaviour while "ignoring" the board decision).

Which is why the board should be entirely on-board with being open when there's not a third-party privacy issue involved (the other point of the Spectre/Meltdown example - there was a third-party privacy issue involved - Intel's - and a responsible disclosure issue as well).

Making my own votes public would basically mean to make the votes of the other board members public, and I won't do that to the other board members unless they agree with making it public, or I think the other's votes were completely stupid ;-) (which, BTW, never happened yet)

That's fair. I would encourage you, as a member of the board, to promote this idea inside the board further.

For now, I'll do a similar offer as Simon already did - if you want to know how I voted on something, ask me in a private mail, and I'll probably answer ;-)

That's fair. :)

...

But what I'm hearing (no disrespect to any of the board here) is that the board doesn't think the membership can "handle the truth".

I think we are more than capable of handling that information.

Agreed on that, but IMHO you are looking at the wrong problem ;-)

The (IMHO) real problem is that you'll often only know "half of the truth" because we have to keep some aspects private, or simply because the summary in the meeting minutes doesn't include every little detail. (A board meeting usually takes an hour, which is much longer than the minutes which you can read in 3, well, minutes.)

A summary, by definition, isn't a full record of what transpired - so yeah, we understand that. But in cases like this (and I'm thinking of US courts where there's a panel of judges as an example), a "majority opinion" and a "dissenting opinion" are published together. Maybe for issues where it's appropriate, the board could do something like this when there isn't consensus.

Of course you can always ask for more details to get a fuller picture [1], and we'll provide these details whenever possible - which also means that sometimes that won't be possible.

Naturally. Depends on the topic, and I think most of us in the community understand that.

Damn, did I painted myself into the middle of the room now while carefully avoiding all corners? ;-) Since the topic is not clearly black or white, I'm not even surprised...

:D Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I've found this much more constructive than some of the other sub-discussions here. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 06 Sep 2018 01:34:59 +0200, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

...

With all due respect to Gertjan (who is a fellow forums admin), his responses to Brian were in a similar vein to some of Linus' rants at other developers (perhaps a bit tamer), yet he doesn't seem to have been given any sort of formal warning here.

I've already apologized for language used, and for an emotional reaction. I still regret having been harsh. Given that, I don't think Bryan would have like his actions made public, and yes, I did bring that up, in private as well as in the board. Where Bryan never brought up these things until his term was done, and that hurt.

Right, and I saw your apology. I hope Brian did as well. My point in raising your comments to Bryan wasn't to call you out; it was to point out that Christian's comments about Linus' behaviour on LKML perhaps not being tolerated on our lists is actually probably not accurate.

...

Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I've found this much more constructive than some of the other sub-discussions here.

I'd like to mention some things here, from the thread: - The board has never been more transparent ( Vincent/Wafaa ) than currently. - One of the ongoing items in the board meetings ( with publishing regular minutes on the project ML ) actually is transparency. Do not expect us to be perfect in this matter. FWIW we decided NOT to discuss this ( thread ) in our yesterday BM, instead to keep it here, with us as individuals taking part.

Yes, there is progress. But just because it's better now doesn't mean it can't still improve.

- What does sadden me: I've always felt that after standing up for board ( not my personal plan, but on community request ) I could count votes as a statement of trust in that I would work as a board member in the interest of the community. From this thread I get that doesn't fit. If I would have known I'd be out in the open "stark naked", I doubt I would have stepped up. Has it ever occurred to someone that as a board member my first priority is the community, not by personal desires / opinions? That this ( it hasn't, but still ) might influence my vote, having the knowledge as a board member now, but not before being elected?

As I said, trust is a two-way street. Yes, I (personally) have trust in the board. I know a few members of the board personally, or through work we've done together (as with you in the forums). But I find it somewhat disconcerting that there's an aversion in the board to being "as open as possible" on topics where there aren't privacy concerns for a third party. That tells me that the board, to some degree, doesn't trust the community, and that concerns me. Since Richard mentioned the MIB quote, let me counter with one of my own, from "A Few Good Men" - "You can't handle the truth!" - that's what it feels like the board is saying about the community. I think the vast majority of the community is adult enough to be trusted with understanding more detail about the things that can and should be shared (like the vote that started this whole thing off). I really don't understand the resistance that some on the board are putting up to this idea. We're a community founded on the principles of free - as in libre - software. At our absolute CORE, we care about freedom. We care about openness. It's in the project charter. But the board wants to present itself as a monolithic entity on matters that specifically don't require it.

- Are we going to deal with all the other teams like this as well? I.e. Are the forums team going 100% transparent? Can all the mod area discussions be anonimized and publised? Same for the other teams?

You know the answer to that, Gertjan. When it comes to moderator actions, there are privacy concerns regarding third parties, particularly when it comes to suspensions. I'm disappointed that you'd go there, honestly, because you know that I have *repeatedly* said "where possible" and "where third party privacy concerns aren't a matter". So to raise this straw man seems a bit disingenuous, my friend. You're better than that. You know it, and so do I. :)

- FWIW: I'm all for transparency, but not just like that. The process the board has already started has to be dealt with very carefully, to make sure no one and nothing gets damaged. Like said before: seen too many occasions where this went wrong at the cost of people's reputations, personal life.

Which I have *constantly* advocated for. I wish members of the board would actually HEAR this in what I've been saying, because it's been there all along, yet at least you and Richard (both to my astonishment) have ignored that part of my points and gone for the cheap straw-man argument. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 16:22, Per Jessen wrote:

...

- Are we going to deal with all the other teams like this as well? I.e. Are the forums team going 100% transparent? Can all the mod area discussions be anonimized and publised? Same for the other teams?

If those teams are elected or appointed by the community, in principle I think we ought to.

What does the election or appointment have to do with it? The other teams in the Project are also doing things on your behalf. Why should privacy of decision-making be afforded to those who undemocratically declare themselves a certain function in our Project? Why can you change any thing in this project without needing to proactively explain the thoughts and reasons that led you to make that change, but the Board not? In your role as an openSUSE hero you quite literally have access to servers that could impact the ability of thousands of contributors from contributing at a press of a button. You could delete every mailing-list right now. And their archives. And possibly even the backups. That is far more power with far greater immediate real world impacts on the Project's ability to function than anything the Board could ever decide upon or implement. Why are all openSUSE infra tickets private by default? Why aren't the logs of every thing you type on every openSUSE server public record? Why can't I see the configuration of this mailinglist server? Isn't it because that if all of that information was public, it would increase the risk we have to the servers that you are administering? That's a perfectly reasonable explanation to me. More people with that knowledge means more potential for malevolent individuals to make use of that information to disrupt the Project. Also, as history as sadly taught us, it is highly stressful and in many cases demotivating when the actions you do on a voluntary basis are excruciatingly judged by a wider audience than those actually on the coal face doing the work. We've seen that with the Heroes - heck, I remember more than one occasion that Board members stepped in to try and calm down the mailinglist lynch mobs giving our Heroes a hard time as a result of decisions and actions made by the Heroes in good faith. Given the responsibility they have, and the nature of the internet if everything was public by default, I believe the Heroes decision to do things private by default, while opening as much information as they can, when they can (often after the incident is relevant), is a fair philosophy to follow. And that philosophy is no different from what I've been advocating the whole time throughout this thread. The Board don't fix servers, we fix people. Either as individuals, or as a group, but regardless we are addressing their feelings and concerns. They are trying to do something in the Project and there is no one else for them to turn to, normally because emotions are high, or because finances are involved. or Both. Or because they normally would be able to make a decision on a topic themselves, but because of extenuating circumstances they instead make it the Boards problem. That is another example - on more than one occasion personal factors or mailinglist flamewars have resulted in otherwise empowered contributors feeling demotivated to the point where they outright refuse to make decisions they normally would themselves, and instead turn to the Board to make the decision for them. Such situations can easily be embarrassing for the individuals involved. Shouldn't the Board be trying to make it better for them, not forced to make it worse by airing their shame publicly? Not all contributors contribute to openSUSE under their real-world names, and wish to retain their privacy, and the Board therefore need to handle their requests even more carefully than we handle the others. And then there is also a professional aspect involved. The Board contains at least one SUSE employee and the Project contains many more, many of which are often working on openSUSE as part of their day job. And yet conflicts happen, and the Board's decisions regarding those conflicts can impact those SUSE employees, and their ability to engage with the project like the rest of their peers. In those cases, the ability for the Board to be seen only as "the Board", gives that decision weight and gravitas which helps in any subsequent discussions with SUSE about their employee. And that's just on an inter-personal aspect. If there ever is a meaningful dispute between the openSUSE organisation and SUSE, the level of privacy we currently have in the Board would be even more beneficial. If all of our votes were public, the elected members of the Board who are also SUSE employees could find themselves in a very awkward position, being required to publicly go on record against their employer. There is no way I can imagine that working out well. Currently Board can vote based on what they feel and think personally, not what will go down well publicly, not which will keep them employed, but what they believe they need to vote for the best interest of the Project. As a side effect of the way we currently do things, the votes of the Board collectively carry the weight of _the Project_. If every individual vote can be judged and discussed at the level of detail as you see in this thread, that benefit would vanish. A single individual can make enough noise on a mailinglist or chat room to at least give some the perception that "the Project" disagrees with any decision. This is a fact of life doing things on the internet. Such disputes are a day to day occurrence. And when they happen in openSUSE, as they do, right now people can (and do) turn to the Board to step in, mediate, and when required make a decision, that has the ability to be final partially because of that less-than-wholly-transparent way we decide. If every decision of the Board is open to the level of public flagellation as you see in this thread, I think it's safe to say that no right minded individual will ever volunteer for the Board. It would be a torturous punishment, not a difficult but necessary service provided by volunteers as it currently is. Heck, this thread is continuing despite multiple people calling for it to end. And I would consider this a mostly civilised debate. If only we had a bunch of trusted individuals who could step in and put their foot down to settle this... NOTE: I say this with a Christian-Boltz level of sarcasm. In reality I feel the actions of multiple of us in the Board has effectively forfeit our collective ability to decide on this matter in the way we would decide on other matters. Just as we trust our admins to do their job right without giving us all root access to all the openSUSE infrastructure, I'll continue to feel the best way forward is a model where the Board have an element of privacy in their decision making, while (as we already do) minuting and sharing as much as is possible without compromising our ability to make such decisions. For everyone who disagrees with me after yet-another-stupidly-long-Richard email, I apologise, but I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree, because I really want to honour the wishes of those who called for this thread to end and I really don't want to write another mail on this topic. Cheers, Rich -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 18:31, Per Jessen wrote:

Hi Richard

I think being elected or appointed makes a significant difference compared to having more or less accidentally joined a team. I (as an arbitrary community member) did not choose/elect/appoint e.g. the forums team nor do I, to my knowledge, have any influence on it's composition. A select do-ocracy. Much like the openSUSE Heroes.

I have a nuanced view on this but I want to avoid a long post. I agree with your use of the word do-ocracy for the majority of the other teams in the Project. I disagree with your statement that you can't have influence on it's composition or actions. You can step up and join the forums team if you disagree with what it's doing. That is do-ocracy at work. You don't have that luxury with the Board. Nor would it make sense, the nature of Board work means that we will never be able to share all of the information behind our decisions. You shouldn't be able to step up and help out without getting additional information only the Board are entrusted with. The nature of Board work is to be discreet, to handle private incidents, and to intervene when do-ocracy fails. Which is why I consider both an element of privacy in the Board AND the fact the Board is elected to be mandatory. In my mind you can't have one without the other. The election grants the Board the mandate it requires to be able to do it's job in those private incidents. If the situation can be handled by do-ocractic, and more public means, then it doesn't require the mandate granted to the Board by it's election, and shouldn't be done by the Board.

...

Why should privacy of decision-making be afforded to those who undemocratically declare themselves a certain function in our Project? Why can you change any thing in this project without needing to proactively explain the thoughts and reasons that led you to make that change, but the Board not?

Permit me to reply with a question - you don't see the Board taking up a special position, the board is just a team, as any other?

If the Board isn't special, why is the Board elected? If the Board is special, why should the Board not be subject to different rules?

The Board is elected because it is required to do work that no one else is in a position to handle. The project-as-a-whole cannot negotiate with our sponsors on financial matters. The project-as-a-whole cannot mediate and decide on disputes between contributors. These roles require discretion and privacy that would not be available if we were MORE transparent than the forums or openSUSE heroes teams. 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" If we could handle everything in public, we wouldn't need that trust, we wouldn't need the election, and we wouldn't need the Board.

...

Why are all openSUSE infra tickets private by default?

I believe the reason is that they might contain sensitive information.

Genau. And everything the Board deals with should include sensitive information (or else, the Board shouldn't be deciding on it)

...

If all of our votes were public, the elected members of the Board who are also SUSE employees could find themselves in a very awkward position, being required to publicly go on record against their employer.

I thought it was quite clear by now that no one is asking for _every_ vote or decision to be made public, automagically? Just enable more transparency by encouraging/enabling votes to be made public, in particular if asked for or if a board member feels it is right.

I understand where you're coming from with the principle - but (for the last time, not because I'm frustrated with you but I really am tired of this thread) I do not believe the Board can be more transparent than we already are without undermining the function of the Board. Or to put it another way, I could say that I accept your principle, but if there is ever a case where the Board where the Board is deciding something where I am comfortable with my vote being public, then I'll be immediately tabling a motion that the Board shouldn't be voting on the topic and should be shifting the decision to this list or delegating that responsibility to others in the Project. You could argue that is even more transparent from a certain point of view. We need a Board for when transparency and do-ocracy fails us, I really want to preserve the environment that enables and empowers the Board to do that job. Beyond that, for everything else should be available to be grasped firmly in the hands of the community-at-large. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 20:43, Per Jessen 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. 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.

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. The minutes (which we had collectively approved) included the numbers of the votes. Had I known that Ana wanted to share the fact publicly that she wanted her objection known I would have not consented to the meeting minutes having the numbers of the vote. This would have allowed Ana to say that she made "_a_" dissenting vote, still leaving the other votes for the other Board members suitably private. I would have also counselled her why I think it's a bad idea for her to do that, but in that scenario she wouldn't have been able to expose the decisions of the other Board members without their consent, so it wouldn't have been nearly as bad as it was. (NOTE: I'm only bringing this up because you did - I have accepted Ana's apology on this aspect of this topic and consider the matter closed)

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?

...

Or to put it another way, I could say that I accept your principle, but if there is ever a case where the Board where the Board is deciding something where I am comfortable with my vote being public,

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. 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 ;)) I think it's an important part of my role as Chairman that I am not granted additional power or privilege over other Board members. I therefore think it's only fair that I share the same freedom in matters that require discretion. And yes, if you are wondering, this means that there has been times I have voted "against" the wishes of SUSE, because I thought the suggestions in question were not in the best interest of the Project. I do not think it would have been appropriate for me to resign in that case - I'm empowered by SUSE to keep them honest. I'm a champion of the community within SUSE, not a stooge of SUSE within the community. They see my role as Chairman as an opportunity to have a direct feedback loop FROM openSUSE as much or more so than my function as being a loop TO openSUSE. To quote SUSE's CEO "if we screw up this open source stuff, we're f*cked". They're quite happy (though not always comfortable) when I use my position to help them correct things when things go a little awry. I like to think that SUSE's internal culture is one that would be rather forgiving in the times I individually have voted in opposition to something they wanted, but I think it is more powerful for the Board to have a situation where _the Board_ as a single unified body, decided something, with my voice as part of it. As individuals, our collective power is diluted the more information we provide about who voted for once. Consider a proposal from SUSE which is voted on by the Board and we publicly announce a 5-1 split against the idea. (like we did with vote that triggered this thread) In that case people will assume I was the vote against. If that's not me, that's unfair on me. But people will take guesses and make assumptions, that's an unfortunate aspect of doing things publicly. However if we publish split with names that disclose that the 1 voter against the idea is a community member, not only is it uncomfortable for me, it would be easy for SUSE to argue that the community Board member is more important than me and leave the matter open for discussion, rather than accepting the decision as the clear decision that it would be. Therefore, I'm happiest when we don't mention the numbers of who voted, nor the names. While this is theoretical, it's grounded in reality - it's human nature to anyone to try and find a chink in the armour about any decision and use that as an excuse for further debate and ignoring the decision. And that's how mailinglist flame wars start. And that's actually fine in many cases (discussions are good - like this one has been), but the Board should be the only body in the openSUSE Project that has an environment to be able to make clear decisive decisions. We need Board Decisions to end flamewars, not start them, because we're the ones who's going to be making decisions when others have failed and decisiveness is really required. All of that said the one exception to this principle the obvious matter of the Veto power of the Chairman position. I don't think I've made it clear enough in a public venue, but when I was interviewed for the Chairman position, I made my feelings on this matter very clear to SUSE. I consider any use of a veto a failure of both the Project and SUSE to resolve the matter by any other means. I will never use the veto without direct ordering of senior/executive management at SUSE. I cannot see into the future, and I can imagine a few hypothetical examples where I might theoretically agree with any order from SUSE to use the veto, but that is a very remote possibility. I think it far more likely I will object to any such suggestion to utilise the veto, therefore such a situation would probably involve my resignation. Even if it didn't, as any use of the veto will effectively be overruling a decision made by the Board and/or Community, the use of that veto will need to be explicitly public. There is no other way for it could be utilised. And in that case would expect the 5 elected members of the Board to object to SUSE in the strongest terms, most likely calling for my removal. Something I would almost certainly support. So..yeah...that would be a case of mutually assured destruction, that's a button I want to keep any fingers as far away from as possible. Hopefully sharing my thoughts on that helps you better understand how I see my role as Chairman. To put it succinctly, I see myself as a Board member with additional responsibilities to keep SUSE in the loop about the Project, and the Project in the loop about SUSE. I answer to the community before SUSE. I've been in the community many years longer than I've been at SUSE or as this Project's Chairman, and I totally intend to continue to be part of the community when any day comes that I'm no longer Chairman or at SUSE. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 07/09/2018 05:47, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Richard Brown [09-06-18 15:47]:

...

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 20:43, Per Jessen wrote: [...]

...

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?

instead of volumous almost answers, do it and stop talking about it. bring the matter to a vote. and probably the vote should be by the Membership as it will define actions expected from those who that same Membership ultimately elects.

asking for a close of debate and:

I hereby move for a vote by the Membership to mandate a public record of the comitteemenbers vote for, against or abstention of, for $SUBJECT, to be included in the minutes. a reason for the particular vote would be welcome but not mandatory. note that private matters as those of a particularly personal matter or of non-disclosure type would be considered outside this direction.

call for seconds

I would argue that to start doing this outside of exceptional circumstances is changing the role of the board and if most members of the community actually want this they should write a clear proposal for changing the function [1] of the board as to when they should be responsible for voting and when they should put the vote to the members, if you can't clearly articulate this then how do you expect the board to? once you have written such a proposal you can then call for a vote of all members on the change to the role of the board practically it might make sense to hold such a vote at the same time as the next election. Personally i'd strongly advocate for not making this change due to reasons already outlined in this thread. -- 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

* Per Jessen [09-08-18 14:32]:

Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 07/09/2018 05:47, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

asking for a close of debate and:

I hereby move for a vote by the Membership to mandate a public record of the comitteemenbers vote for, against or abstention of, for $SUBJECT, to be included in the minutes. a reason for the particular vote would be welcome but not mandatory. note that private matters as those of a particularly personal matter or of non-disclosure type would be considered outside this direction.

call for seconds

I would argue that to start doing this outside of exceptional circumstances is changing the role of the board

What Patrick proposes will change the role of the Board??? I think not. The role of the Board would not change in any way.

...

Personally i'd strongly advocate for not making this change due to reasons already outlined in this thread.

I find it very difficult to accept the point being argued here - "trust is enough, no need for control". I have seen noone argue that in this thread. Real life is full of examples to the contrary - Swissair? Lehmann Brothers? Greece? (just happens to have been in the news due to the anniversary).

Are there any actual rules for submitting the above to a vote by the Board? It is then up to the Board to decide whether to defer to the community, and if so, prepare a referendum at the earliest convenience.

you would at least think a member making a motion and calling for a vote would be recognized as such or denied outright as not prudent or .... is accountability not deemed a necessary attribute? in the particular case it is only to one's reputation which is how the board members are elected. and atm that only amounts to a "popularity contest" as we have no basis to judge who may best represent us in the manner we expect. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* Simon Lees [09-08-18 19:25]:

On 09/09/2018 03:18, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 07/09/2018 05:47, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

asking for a close of debate and:

I hereby move for a vote by the Membership to mandate a public record of the comitteemenbers vote for, against or abstention of, for $SUBJECT, to be included in the minutes. a reason for the particular vote would be welcome but not mandatory. note that private matters as those of a particularly personal matter or of non-disclosure type would be considered outside this direction.

call for seconds

I would argue that to start doing this outside of exceptional circumstances is changing the role of the board

What Patrick proposes will change the role of the Board??? I think not. The role of the Board would not change in any way.

No what was proposed toward the end of this thread was that the board start putting decisions to a vote of all members which clearly is a change.

no, that was definitely NOT the request. the request was a call for a vote by the membership to have board voting records public except where non-disclosure or personal issues were present. we would like to know how members of the board vote. after all, the board is elected to represent the membership. how is the membership to know who to elect or if the elected follow what we were led to believe they would do. there needs to be some accounting. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* Simon Lees [09-08-18 20:08]:

On 09/09/2018 09:18, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Simon Lees [09-08-18 19:25]:

...

On 09/09/2018 03:18, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 07/09/2018 05:47, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

asking for a close of debate and:

I hereby move for a vote by the Membership to mandate a public record of the comitteemenbers vote for, against or abstention of, for $SUBJECT, to be included in the minutes. a reason for the particular vote would be welcome but not mandatory. note that private matters as those of a particularly personal matter or of non-disclosure type would be considered outside this direction.

call for seconds

I would argue that to start doing this outside of exceptional circumstances is changing the role of the board

What Patrick proposes will change the role of the Board??? I think not. The role of the Board would not change in any way.

No what was proposed toward the end of this thread was that the board start putting decisions to a vote of all members which clearly is a change.

no, that was definitely NOT the request. the request was a call for a vote by the membership to have board voting records public except where non-disclosure or personal issues were present. we would like to know how members of the board vote.

Well you can do this if you want but its not going to have a big impact as the board almost never deals with issues that don't involve non-disclosure or personal issues. The whole point of the board is to deal with these issues because no one else in the project can. If we are dealing with anything that is not one of these issues you have the right to ask the board why are we dealing with something that could be handled by the community.

I believe that is exactly what we have requested multiple times in this thread and been met with adamant resistance or better said, a stone wall. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Friday, 7 September 2018 18:22:34 ACST, Martin Pluskal wrote:
> On Thu, 2018-09-06 at 16:17 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
>> * Richard Brown  [09-06-18 15:47]: ...
> Stepping a bit late to this semi-ridiculous discussion but I disagree
> with both:
> * proposal itself to make votes part of public record
> * voting on this topic among openSUSE members seems unnecessary to me
> as well.
>
> Cheers
>
> Martin

Given that it was the openSUSE members who initially created the role of
the board and set its scope, as a board member I feel that it is the
community not the board that should drive any change in its scope. From
brief discussions in and out of board meetings I think that much of the
board agrees with this and as such a change in the board's scope to
start asking for member votes on a range of issues is likely to require
a vote from members as we the board are not likely to make that change
on our own.

-- 

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

Op zaterdag 8 september 2018 19:33:22 CEST schreef Per Jessen:

Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Richard Brown [09-06-18 15:47]:

...

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 20:43, Per Jessen wrote: [...]

...

...

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?

instead of volumous almost answers, do it and stop talking about it. bring the matter to a vote. and probably the vote should be by the Membership as it will define actions expected from those who that same Membership ultimately elects.

asking for a close of debate and:

I hereby move for a vote by the Membership to mandate a public record of the comitteemenbers vote for, against or abstention of, for $SUBJECT, to be included in the minutes. a reason for the particular vote would be welcome but not mandatory. note that private matters as those of a particularly personal matter or of non-disclosure type would be considered outside this direction.

call for seconds

I second the motion.

Per, shouldn't voting happen in controlled environment, like our Helios voting system? And be documented instead of in this thread? I'd like to be sure the number of pro and contra votes are 100% correct and reliable, with a clear start and beginning of the voting time, and not depend on posts in a thread like this.

Sorry about the delay, real life keeps getting in the way. I would be happy to leave it to the Board to decide, but only provided the votes are made public.

-- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Richard Brown wrote:

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 20:43, Per Jessen 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

Simon Lees wrote:

On 07/09/2018 04:13, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 18:31, Per Jessen wrote:

...

...

Why are all openSUSE infra tickets private by default?

I believe the reason is that they might contain sensitive information.

Genau. And everything the Board deals with should include sensitive information (or else, the Board shouldn't be deciding on it)

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.

Well because Ana shared her opinion you then found out mine and Richards opinion which left me in a position of feeling I should justify my opinion

That discussion / this thread only arose because we did not know your votes.

Which leaves you at the point of knowing I voted yes but not why and if you knew my reasoning you'd likely agree with my position but if you do not your more likely to disagree.

I am happy knowing just _what_ you voted. If you feel a need to defend your position to your electorate, but you cannot due to being unable to share the information needed, I recommend you resign. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (17.6°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - dedicated server rental in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* Simon Lees [09-08-18 19:33]:

On 09/09/2018 05:26, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 07/09/2018 04:13, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Richard Brown wrote:

...

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 at 18:31, Per Jessen wrote:

...

> Why are all openSUSE infra tickets private by default?

I believe the reason is that they might contain sensitive information.

Genau. And everything the Board deals with should include sensitive information (or else, the Board shouldn't be deciding on it)

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.

Well because Ana shared her opinion you then found out mine and Richards opinion which left me in a position of feeling I should justify my opinion

That discussion / this thread only arose because we did not know your votes.

...

Which leaves you at the point of knowing I voted yes but not why and if you knew my reasoning you'd likely agree with my position but if you do not your more likely to disagree.

I am happy knowing just _what_ you voted. If you feel a need to defend your position to your electorate, but you cannot due to being unable to share the information needed, I recommend you resign.

Well then I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree and you can choose not to vote for me next time. Because if I vote on a controversial topic where 90% of the info is private I don't know how you expect me to be able to say why I voted in a certain way and really in my opinion knowing what I voted does not help you form an opinion of how I managed a situation but knowing why I voted most certainly does, if you don't know the why then your just guessing and your guess maybe completely wrong especially if you don't know the info and personally I don't want you to be basing your vote for me on guesses and assumptions you've made about what i've done id much rather it was based on the facts so you can actually make a proper decision.

no way to know how you voted unless you reveal such. and no one is demanding private information. how can anyone base a vote on anyone w/o and information on their expected performance? why do you want the membership to have to guess how you perform your elected position? do not be afraid of accountability. it is what keeps us honest. no one is attempting to haul you up on charges, only for the board to be accountable to the membership who elected them. it is not a personal thing. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* Simon Lees [09-08-18 20:19]: [...]

Well everyone on the current board has been elected from not being on the board and once we are elected to the board you really don't see that much of what we do even now we take minutes because its mostly dealing with private issues.

...

why do you want the membership to have to guess how you perform your elected position? do not be afraid of accountability. it is what keeps us honest.

When most of the important issues we are dealing with are in the areas of conflict resolution yes your going to have to guess although a reasonable indication might be that conflicts are generally being resolved without turning into hate threads on public mailing lists.

If you are only electing board members based on the 10% of there activities that you actually see you are probably choosing them on the wrong criteria.

then except for your "resume" presented when running for election, there is for the most part only "wrong criteria" on which to make a decision. I would like to know how you vote on those issues which can be made public w/o damage to someone's character or violation of a non-disclosure. is that so hard? and I believe that *most* of the membership would agree. we don't want dirty underwear. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* Sarah Julia Kriesch [09-10-18 05:25]:

I would say it depends on the topic. Sometimes we have to discuss. Another topic needs only 1 time reading, hearing different opinions in some small sentences and after that you can have the decision.

The Board exist with different people you have elected. So we can have different opinions. If we have a 50:50 or 60:40 decision as a result, we follow the topic up a matter with a new discussion. If only 1 person votes against the decision, this person has to accept the voting of the others. That's democrazy. The only question is how much or what should be made public. Do we really want to read the name of the Board Member who voted against? Is that necessary?

I fail to see the problem with revealing the vote weather one or two or ... do not follow the majority. there is no shame in disagreement, it only shows disagreement. unless there is a unanimous result, there will always be a dissenter, one or more who disagree. a consensus does not require unanimity.

On the other side we have European rules like the new European privacy regulation. So we are not allowed to publish names without any agreement.

I would surely thing that to be a member of the board, one would be compelled to agree to the rules for the board, so the problem of agreement does not exist, or we have board member(s) who should not be on the board. when one puts aside the possibility of revealing personal data or non-disclosure items, I fail to see the problem with revealing the vote. either I am quite dense (a definite possibiltiy) or you (collective) have failed to present a compelling agrument. reveal the vote with respect to the two situations above or call for a vote from the board about revealing the vote, or present it to the membership for a vote. and the board voting on this would be somewhat self-serving. I believe the membership should decide. btw, I read the lists and see the posts there. I have not requested and have absolutely no requirement for an additional personal mail for what I can read on the lists. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Op donderdag 6 september 2018 16:22:49 CEST schreef Per Jessen:

Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

...

I'd like to mention some things here, from the thread: - The board has never been more transparent ( Vincent/Wafaa ) than currently. - One of the ongoing items in the board meetings ( with publishing regular minutes on the project ML ) actually is transparency. Do not expect us to be perfect in this matter. FWIW we decided NOT to discuss this ( thread ) in our yesterday BM, instead to keep it here, with us as individuals taking part. - What does sadden me: I've always felt that after standing up for board ( not my personal plan, but on community request ) I could count votes as a statement of trust in that I would work as a board member in the interest of the community. From this thread I get that doesn't fit.

The community cannot know how you interpret their wishes and desires. The ones who voted for you no doubt trust you, but would probably still like to know. The ones who didn't vote for you might also like to know. Why should "trust but verify" not apply to you and/or the board?

So far, only one single community member ever asked me about my personal pov/ vote on subjects the board voted on and made public. This about this thread, never before. Even though I've stated in the past that I'm willing to many times.

...

If I would have known I'd be out in the open "stark naked", I doubt I would have stepped up. Has it ever occurred to someone that as a board member my first priority is the community, not by personal desires / opinions?

Your _personal_ interpretation of "community" is very important though. Maybe it doesn't coincide with somebodyelses interpretation. I still think it is your personal opinion on the community that matters.

I was in the election IRC meeting, IIRC no one asked me what my POV on 'community' is, anybody could have. And my "If you have any questions, feel free to contact me" has been out there dozens of times. And FWIW, my personal interpretation of "community" has been all over the place since openSUSE exists.

...

- Are we going to deal with all the other teams like this as well? I.e. Are the forums team going 100% transparent? Can all the mod area discussions be anonimized and publised? Same for the other teams?

If those teams are elected or appointed by the community, in principle I think we ought to.

Please also read my latest responses to this thread. I am *not against further transparency, defnitely not*. But, I do want to see this happening in a well thought through, a well balanced and ditto documented manner. A first step the board took ( agreed upon unanimously ) was publishing more of the minutes. And, the decision made at last BM to not have the same discussion in Board Meetings, but rather take part in this thread, was another step. Another point of concern I have is the amount of work involved. Minutes have to be taken much more detailed than we do now, which might imply that one of the members has to focus on taking the minutes instead of actually taking part in discussions. A thing that comes to mind is having a community member taking minutes, which also would avoid mistrust re. the minutes from the board itself, but at least allow all board members to take part in discussions and be well-informed re. things that need voting. Taking detailed minutes and at the same time 100% joining a meeting is virtually impossible, at least for me :). The main reason I'm following this thread and take part in it, is because I feel I owe that to the community that voted me on board to use my eyes and ears, and my questioning my own POVs, over and over again. For me nothing is writen in stone re. my opinions; if someone, or others, come up with things to think about and reconsider my POV, I have no hesiation to do so, even gladly. -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 07/09/2018 03:19, Per Jessen wrote:

Let's not kill the idea with red tape. Let the minutes document the results of votes (5-1, 3-3, 6-0 etc) and let it be up to an individual board member whether or not to make his/her vote public, especially when asked.

The immediate problem with that is if the vote is 5-1 and you ask the right person or 4-2 and you ask the right people you will find out what everyone else voted, even if it is against there will for you to know (In my case I may not be able to justify my decision to you without making private info that affected my reasoning public) So in most cases it really needs to be all or none and the most convenient way to do that is when the board is discussing what we minute. -- 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

On Thu, 06 Sep 2018 09:23:02 +0930, Simon Lees wrote:

On 06/09/2018 08:30, Jim Henderson wrote:

...

On Wed, 05 Sep 2018 22:43:31 +0200, Christian Boltz wrote:

...

Hello,

Am Mittwoch, 5. September 2018, 00:21:34 CEST schrieb Jim Henderson:

...

On Tue, 04 Sep 2018 15:40:29 +0200, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote: But what I'm hearing (no disrespect to any of the board here) is that the board doesn't think the membership can "handle the truth".

I think we are more than capable of handling that information.

Agreed on that, but IMHO you are looking at the wrong problem ;-)

The (IMHO) real problem is that you'll often only know "half of the truth" because we have to keep some aspects private, or simply because the summary in the meeting minutes doesn't include every little detail. (A board meeting usually takes an hour, which is much longer than the minutes which you can read in 3, well, minutes.)

A summary, by definition, isn't a full record of what transpired - so yeah, we understand that. But in cases like this (and I'm thinking of US courts where there's a panel of judges as an example), a "majority opinion" and a "dissenting opinion" are published together. Maybe for issues where it's appropriate, the board could do something like this when there isn't consensus.

In our first couple of meetings as this board there was a couple of topics where we spent more time discussing what we should and shouldn't make public then we actually spent discussing the topic, now that we know where everyone on the board sits with this it doesn't take so long.

We never make things private because we think the "Membership can't handle the truth", sometimes we deal with information that is commercial in confidence for example occasionally a manager within SUSE will share something with us a bit before they make it public knowledge to SUSE employee's. We will generally keep disputes private because we are generally of the view that its in the best interest of the people involved and the community that they are resolved privately. These are generally the only kinds of things the board keeps private, however they are also the kinds of things that the board spends most of its time dealing with.

Thanks, Simon. I hear you on this - unfortunately, from other members of the board, I'm hearing statements that are contrary to yours. Richard's MIB quote is perhaps just a poor attempt at humour. But as I've said over and over again, from the start - where there are privacy concerns, I have no issue with the discussion (and even in most cases, the outcome) being private. That's only sensible because there are third party privacy concerns. The same goes with information provided under an NDA (does the board sign an NDA with SUSE? If they don't, perhaps they should for sensitive information like that - then it's possible for SUSE to state "this information is provided under your NDA, please don't share it". I've been covered by NDAs due to my involvement in the Novell/Attachmate/ Microfocus/SUSE/NetIQ/Whomever they are today forums for over 20 years. That works well and makes it really easy to make it unambiguous when information coming from our corporate sponsor is NDA-worthy or embargoed until a public announcement). Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 06 Sep 2018 15:15:32 +0200, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

I'd rather go step by step, and keep the discussion with the community open and ongoing, to get to some well balanced and well documented situation in the end. And well balanced also meaning taking whatever's been suggested in this thread in consideration. I strongly believe that the board cannot do this on their own, i.e. should not be making their own rules to stick to.

And I'm good with a step-by-step approach to improve transparency. That is something that can help prevent the sort of situation you talked about - and can make it easier to see what pitfalls are there that nobody has thought about. Seeing a plan for that would be good, though. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

A different, but IMHO equally valid, option that comes to mind, would be that the Board does not make any decisions at all ( we could hold back info from the minutes, have unverifiable votings and so on ), but instead pushes all decision making to the public area and ask the community to decide by public, named vote on any decision. That would require volunteers to set up a voting procedure on each decision to be made, have other volunteers check the voting setup etc. , an independent secretary that does the minute-taking, an independent minutes checking official, but if that's the desired way of making decisions, finding those people shouldn't be that hard.

Counter proposal - as I have written twice now, let's skip board elections altogether, just have a rotating membership. The Chairman is appointed, but every other member is picked automatically from the community roster and asked to be a board member for 12 months. Anyone can decline of course, and the next one will be asked. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (18.9°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - virtual servers, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Tue, 04 Sep 2018 10:24:48 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

On Sun, 2 Sep 2018 at 22:47, Jim Henderson wrote:

...

Richard, you know that I trust the board. But that said, there's a question of accountability - "trust, but verify" is important for the membership to know that the board is doing what they were elected to do.

In order to make an informed decision when someone runs for a second term on the board, how is anyone to know that the person they're voting for is representing their interests if the decisions they make (or votes they cast) aren't open to public review?

The same information that you had and have to vote on any other Board member candidate in the project.

That information is incomplete, but the best information we have. It's like a thing I've seen some companies do when hiring candidates: They have a cognitive abilities test (the CCAT is one I've seen) - it's no substitute for looking at actual performance data on the individual if that's available, but when you're hiring someone who's external, you don't get neutral performance data on the individual, so you have to use data from a test that's been designed to be a good predictor of future performance without covering past performance. But nearly anyone who works in recruiting will tell you that, if possible, actual performance data is a better predictor and far preferred. When someone runs for a board position as a new candidate, you don't have a voting record to use as a part of evaluating them. You can only go on their promises for what they will do as a board member, and what you've seen from them in non-board-member roles. Actually showing what you did, though, as a member of the board? That lets us draw a "you promised this, and you delivered on it" or "you promised this, and you didn't deliver on it". That's fairly important when it comes to re-election campaigns. The members' voting record is crucial data for an electorate. Candidates run on their record, when they have one. But you can only do that if the record is public.

Board Membership should not be the sole contribution that any individual makes to the Project

True. But their contribution as a developer isn't the same kind of contribution as someone in a position that's involved in project governance.

Their should be plenty of other examples regarding existing Board members opinions, work ethic, and other factors to help anyone assist where to put their votes, just as their is for when voting for new Board members.

See above. :)

We have our strict 2 term limit for many reasons, but I understand one of them was the assumption that the Board will be voting in private.

While talking about such rules, it's also worth pointing out the Project's right to recall a Board.

There is no provision in our rules for the Project to call for the resignation or removal of a single Board member.

Which is perhaps problematic, but also maybe a separate discussion.

But there IS a provision for the entire Board to be re-elected. The threshold for this is currently if 20% of the Membership call for it. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules

This rule and the very low threshold for recall only makes sense BECAUSE of the expectation that the Board will be making decisions as a collective. Otherwise it would be madness to have such a rule constituted in a way.

If we are seriously thinking about forcing the Board to publish the exact votes of each individual member, then I think we need a full review of all our entire constitution and ruleset.

Not a bad idea - as times change, it might be worth having a periodic review to see if those items still reflect the goal and will of the project and its membership.

I feel the ability for the Project to individually call for the removal of a specific Board member would be one rule that must be added in such a case.

And I would argue that the rule for the entire Board to be re-elected if 20% of the Membership call for it should be altered, either with a much higher threshold, or removed entirely.

Well, the latter would follow from the former - logically, if 20% of the membership could call for the removal of a specific board member, there's no reason they couldn't remove all the members individually. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

For anybody reading this post: I'm posting this as a private person, see my adjusted signature, and definitely not as an openSUSE Board Member. I've tried to post a neutral piece of content, but am aware that I'm emotianal about this, since Bryan was a Board member, though his activities were virtually zero. Op zaterdag 25 augustus 2018 23:16:07 CEST schreef Bryan Lunduke:

On 2018-08-25 13:01, Richard Brown wrote:

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Correct. That's how every election -- in every industry/government

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across the globe -- works. If someone doesn't want to "come in

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second"

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they don't run for office.

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Even popular people lose. Just how it works. That's life.

F*ck popular, that's your perception, not mine. Sorry if your's is such, being elected for what you do instead of popularity to me looks less stressful

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But the Board is not 'running for office' in a sense that can be

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considered analogous to any industry or government.

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openSUSE Board Members are not empowered to create laws or sign orders

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which others are duty bound to follow

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Especially when you consider our primary role being one of dispute

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resolution and judgement, we have more in common with Jurors than

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company Board Members or Elected politicans

This is incorrect.

The openSUSE Board also makes budgetary decisions, endorsement decisions

(and policies / plans), coordination with other organizations (and

individuals), event planning, and even decisions of who will (or won't)

be allowed to be members of openSUSE (or utilize openSUSE resources).

The "jury" comparison you make is absolutely accurate... for a very

small portion of what the openSUSE Board does.

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I'm getting some mixed signals here, my friend. :)

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Just a few days ago you chastised others for being public about Board

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decisions:

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"Replying a little seriously, and to justify my vote publicly (which

...

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is

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something I shouldn't have to do, given the Board's rule that

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decisions made collectively are defended collectively, but someone

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seems to have forgotten that... :-/ )" - Richard Brown, Tuesday

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And you are either acting intentionally obtuse or don't notice the

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huge monumental difference between a situation where Board members are

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required to stand up publicly as individuals and justify their

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decision in public, and a situation where the Board collectively owns

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both the decision "we as a group feel X" and the dissent "but a number

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in our group also felt Y"

I'll just move past the out-of-left-field personal attacks...

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The Board have been elected to a position where they are the final

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arbiters of any decision that gets to their desk.

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If an issue gets to their desk it can be argued that it only does so

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because no other contributor was willing or able to make the decisions

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via our usual (very public) means.

Somewhat correct.

This sort of process is not entirely unlike many forms of government

(such as in the USA) where the higher levels handle the items that the

lower levels either haven't, or chose not to tackle themselves

(City/County/State/Federal).

That said, the openSUSE Board also tackles items that do not first come

in front of the broader openSUSE membership. Sometimes yes. Sometimes

no. Either way, this is fine (as the Board is elected to handle such

things)... but it is entirely not like Juries in any real way.

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I think it is therefore highly important that those decisions which

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are trusted to the Board, are conducted in a way that empowers each

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Board member to act on their conscious, without fear of public

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reprisals after the fact.

I get it. Your position is that a person in an elected position should

be able to carry out their duties in secret -- and people who voted for

them have no right to know how they vote or what their options are.

That's weird to me. I see your point, I simply disagree with it on a

very core level.

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If the Project wishes to fundamentally change the role and purpose of

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the Board then I'd be willing to see that go to a Membership vote.

Yes. I think this would be good. Simply make the votes public.

That's

all. Every vote taken by the openSUSE Board -- on *every* issue --

should be made public. That way, when the next election occurs, the

openSUSE membership can make an informed decision on who to elect (or

re-elect) to best represent us.

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But the absolute transparency you seem to advocate for, would not get

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my vote - if such an idea is popular, I would suggest the Board as we

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know it would be pointless - we might as well have anyone and everyone

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making every decision in public.

That's ok. I respect your thoughts here. I believe you would be

out-voted by the membership by a rather wide margin.

Anyone else want the votes of Board members to be public?

Come on. So every board member can be attacked personally by you or the rest of the world? How the f*ck are we going to have board members if they can be social-media-killed after producing minutes. Dude, you're missing the point here completely.

Having a

simple vote on this would seem to me to be an easy way to settle this

(without the whole name-calling thing).

-Bryan Lunduke

This is really crossing my lines, Bryan. Sorry to say so, and I've kept quiet about some things so far, only because of my own principles of decency, But you are the one asking for transparancy: You, and no one else, were the one that threatened the other Board members to go public in your youtube etc, channels, if they would not follow your opinion. Threatened with going public on your channels. Threatened, no other word. As a Board Member at the time, you twisted our arms behind our backs, ready for cufs. You, as a Board Member. That was the kind of democracy you showed me, and what the 'disappointment' phrasing was for. Don't worry about me, you can kill my reputation where ever you want, I don't care. Threaten me personally like that, please, But, do not ever retry this on me again. I'm still feeling hurt by that coming from a self proclaimed free and open source person, where I thought free and open source wouldn't need such tactics, and certainly you personally wouldn't.

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I'm getting some mixed signals here, my friend. :)

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On a personal note: Bryan, please leave us alone. We'll do fine without your interference. The openSUSE Project is about openSUSE, not about Bryan Lunduke. If you think this needs some discussion, feel free to email me, but, come to think if it, rather reply to this list first, but still feel free to contact me. -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org