On 04/28/2018 10:47 AM, Kostas Koudaras wrote:

With no further delay I present you the results of the elections for 2018: Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht) 166 Simon Lees 133 Ana María Martínez 185 Gerry Makaro (Fraser_Bell) 98 Aaron Luna 72

The First three: Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht),Simon Lees and Ana María Martínez,will serve a two year term.

Congratulations, Gertjan, Simon, and Ana! It is good to see three Very Qualified individuals make it to the openSUSE Board. ... of course, IMHO, I think that was a guarantee in this election, whomever succeeded. To Aaron, I hope you decide to run again next year. And, of course, a Big Round of Applause to Kostas and the Elections Team for a Super Job Well Done! Gertjan, Simon, and Ana, you have my Full Support and I offer any help I can give to you: You can count on it. Otherwise, as for myself, I have been digging deeper into Contributions to openSUSE, and I intend to continue heading in that direction. ... I made some minor Contributions to Yast, as I learn, am also taking over the Yast-Fonts Module from Petr Gajdos and am going to become a full-fledged member of the Yast Team in the future. ... I am getting familiar with the Online Support Documentation and will be working on improving the SDB and Documentation. ... I am also going to be looking at helping spread the openSUSE News and other Communication Channels. So, Christian and Doug can look forward to getting a bit more help. Again, Congratulations, all involved. -- -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 Sun, Apr 29, 2018 at 12:47 AM, Kostas Koudaras wrote:

The First three: Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht),Simon Lees and Ana María Martínez,will serve a two year term.

Best Regards Kostas "Warlordfff" Koudaras

Congrats to all! Kostas and Chuck thanks a lot for your hard work for this year election. You made this year election so great! The voting number speaks! I believe Gerry and Aaron contribution will not stop here, you both have done great so far and I believe will do the same in the year ahead. For Gertjan, Simon and Ana congratulation! We wait your move as board team member. BTW, We wait you in Indonesia. I'm seriously thinking to invite Simon to visit Indonesia to meet huge openSUSE community here, maybe in Bali (last time we met you said you never visit Bali, which is strange for Australian :-P) , or maybe something more adventurous visiting the real big lizard in Komodo Island :-P. Best regards, -- medwinz https://medwinz.blogspot.com https://about.me/medwinz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 29/04/18 10:08, medwinz wrote:

On Sun, Apr 29, 2018 at 12:47 AM, Kostas Koudaras wrote:

...

The First three: Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht),Simon Lees and Ana María Martínez,will serve a two year term.

Best Regards Kostas "Warlordfff" Koudaras

Congrats to all!

Kostas and Chuck thanks a lot for your hard work for this year election. You made this year election so great! The voting number speaks!

I believe Gerry and Aaron contribution will not stop here, you both have done great so far and I believe will do the same in the year ahead.

For Gertjan, Simon and Ana congratulation! We wait your move as board team member.

BTW, We wait you in Indonesia. I'm seriously thinking to invite Simon to visit Indonesia to meet huge openSUSE community here, maybe in Bali (last time we met you said you never visit Bali, which is strange for Australian :-P) , or maybe something more adventurous visiting the real big lizard in Komodo Island :-P.

We might have to try and work something out at some point :-) -- 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

Although I’m not a voting member bu as along time use and supporter of (open)SuSE, and in the interests of diversity, could I ask for a breakdown of the voting membership and board by gender and racial origin. If the results are as I suspect, what are board’s plans for addressing this?

And don’t start with the nonsense about “unbiassed” and “meritocracy.”

Hi, First of all, data on voters doesn't exist, those are anonymous voters from the whole community. I found that idea to be really curious. I don't really understand how do you make community that memeber of any gender or ethnic group can join more diverse? It's based on person's will to join. We encourage everybody, and whoever joins is equal member. I also don't understand how you make democratically chosen board to be diverse, that would require for voting process to be rigged in favor of people with some specific racial origins (because some of them were underrepresented) and gender (same thing), that's not democratic at all then. Some people look beyond gender and racial origins and want people with skills and ideas to run the project. It certainly would be interesting to have diverse board, but with democratic approach, it's just not viable. LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world PS: Didn't have a chance to reach you Ana on IRC, congratulations :D -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Op zondag 29 april 2018 11:10:37 CEST schreef Administrator:

...

On 28 Apr 2018, at 18:47, Kostas Koudaras wrote:

Hello people of openSUSE after the longest election period in the history of the project elections ended in a successful way. 237 people voted out of 400 which is a record of participation both in percentage and in actual number. It was the first year we attempted to vote through Helios Voting System and we solved all problems that came to our attention. I must say that although the work of the election committee ends somewhere around here the new elected members have a long way ahead of them and us as the election committee wish them all the best. With no further delay I present you the results of the elections for 2018: Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht) 166 Simon Lees 133 Ana María Martínez 185 Gerry Makaro (Fraser_Bell) 98 Aaron Luna 72

The First three: Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht),Simon Lees and Ana María Martínez,will serve a two year term.

Best Regards Kostas "Warlordfff" Koudaras

I’d like to congratulate Ana for joining the board.

Although I’m not a voting member bu as along time use and supporter of (open)SuSE, and in the interests of diversity, could I ask for a breakdown of the voting membership and board by gender and racial origin. If the results are as I suspect, what are board’s plans for addressing this?

And don’t start with the nonsense about “unbiassed” and “meritocracy.”

Thanks is advance David-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-announce+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-announce+help@opensuse.org

First, 'racial origin'? What are you suggesting? Second, and not the least: You have had the chance to become a voting member, we - the current Board - even have changed the membership conditions to make it more accessible for anyone contributing. You could even have stepped up and make yourself eligible for the Board. Third: There has been a debate on IRC, widely announced, for which the elections were delayed. You, like anyone else, could have joined and ask this question there. Last one: Does this diversity start by congratulating only one person, based on her gender or racial origin? -- 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 29/04/18 18:40, Administrator wrote:

...

On 28 Apr 2018, at 18:47, Kostas Koudaras wrote:

Hello people of openSUSE after the longest election period in the history of the project elections ended in a successful way. 237 people voted out of 400 which is a record of participation both in percentage and in actual number. It was the first year we attempted to vote through Helios Voting System and we solved all problems that came to our attention. I must say that although the work of the election committee ends somewhere around here the new elected members have a long way ahead of them and us as the election committee wish them all the best. With no further delay I present you the results of the elections for 2018: Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht) 166 Simon Lees 133 Ana María Martínez 185 Gerry Makaro (Fraser_Bell) 98 Aaron Luna 72

The First three: Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht),Simon Lees and Ana María Martínez,will serve a two year term.

Best Regards Kostas "Warlordfff" Koudaras

I’d like to congratulate Ana for joining the board.

Although I’m not a voting member bu as along time use and supporter of (open)SuSE, and in the interests of diversity, could I ask for a breakdown of the voting membership and board by gender and racial origin. If the results are as I suspect, what are board’s plans for addressing this?

And don’t start with the nonsense about “unbiassed” and “meritocracy.”

One of the things i've always loved about openSUSE is the diversity of its members, even in Australia one of the biggest pieces of feedback I get is openSUSE is great for us because you understand English isn't the only language and you ship with a large number of translations which is something many distro's don't do (Australian universities have a reasonably high percentage of International students mostly from around Asia). Is there more we can do here, probably there are many parts of openSUSE that are very hard to contribute to if you don't speak and understand atleast some english, as I said in the election debate this is something i'd like to see improved, as someone who only speaks english i'm really not sure of the best way but am open to suggestions. I think the other replies cover everything else really well so I won't say anymore. -- 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

There is plenty of evidence for the presence of unconscious bias in almost all decisions people make. The simplest is that people, when they’re voting or deciding on appointments or hiring (which would include selecting board members) they tend to choose people who they perceive as “like themselves.” Meritocracy tends to emphasise this as most people believe they have their status and position through personal merit rather than benefiting from bias. There are plenty of indicators in use of language and other things both of people’s social and racial context and their gender. This can’t be avoided but making people aware of their biases (and feedback when these have apparently influenced decisions) helps in minimising it’s effect: everybody is capable of learning if they want, and I assume this audience are interested in fairness and learning.

There are 397 members of the openSUSE project. They are not housed in one building, paid by the same person. What they do have in common however is that they are contributors that follow simple principles. I would say that in our case, bias is more possible from different angle too then. What board candidate contributes to and what do they help creating. Github (which is example only for third of the project but closest to my heart) doesn't usually have data like gender/race/whatever else, but it shows what person helped to make happen. I'm sure many people saw beautiful poster from Ana, showing all the candidates together in grid. Before that I knew who I will be voting for, without knowing what most people I had voted for looked like. I just read their ideas and contributions, some of them I talked with on IRC/Discord. The only way we could have people voting without any bias would be removing all names and images, and leaving only list of ideas and contributions. At the same time, remember that we sometimes want to vote for people we appreciate for different reasons than contributions or ideas (attitude, excitement), which you can't pass through static text only (but shows up nicely in longer discussions). You can't remove bias without generating new one then.

The second is more insidious and difficult to address: the culture of an organisation. Torvald’s abrasive and abusive behaviour would deter anyone who isn’t thick skinned and equally abrasive. This self-selection preserves and propagates the culture and behaviour. OS will have an organisational culture and behaviour which may be having this effect - I don't know as the OS culture suits me. That is something which the board could investigate and address.

Not all of us are Kernel devs, it's not like Torvalds is the only influential person in all FOSS, depending on field you are invested in, it's combination of different kinds of people as well. From my point of view, jimmac and Sam Hewitt are definitely influencing parts of my work. I can see many people in this particular project being inspired in culture by Richard (Brown, not Stallman) for example. We are people with a burning passion for the openSUSE project, not Linus Torvalds appreciation ciclejerk.

Here are some readings in this area: https://www.berkshireassociates.com/balanceview/bid/284452/discrimination-an... http://www.law.virginia.edu/pdf/faculty/ImplicitBiasinOrganizationsandAdvers... https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1471&context=cahrswp

Believe it or not, I read those. They are written in a way which suggests collection of workers' data in some places (which is never a good idea), as well as creating self policing environment (which depending on environment, people and other connotations may by good, but usually leads to nervous environment). It only makes sense for me to disagree with ideas like those, as I see them as a little too strict for community depending on people joining it based on communities' overall vibe.

And before anyone objects about manipulation of the “free and fair” democratic system, the research shows that natural democratic systems are neither free nor fair but contain multiple biases and discriminations. All I’m proposing is that these are uncovered and discussed.

I agree, but at the same time, we need to consider changes like those carefully. Any bad code of conduct / policy changes will lead to Lunduke making video about how much we can't hug around here, and that's bad news for us and everybody else. So virtual hugs to you and I would like to hear suggestions that don't involve personal data / self policing around our community ;) LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hi, Let me first take this opportunity to congratulate everyone elected to the board, and offer my sincere thanks to every one of you who ran for the positions. Thanks also goes out to the election officials who made the process a great success. Job well done by the retiring members of the current board, thanks to you too! A few responses to the current thread inline... On Sun, 2018-04-29 at 12:13 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

On 29 April 2018 at 11:10, Administrator wrote:

...

Although I’m not a voting member bu as along time use and supporter of (open)SuSE, and in the interests of diversity, could I ask for a breakdown of the voting membership and board by gender and racial origin. If the results are as I suspect, what are board’s plans for addressing this?

We now have a Board that is made up of 33% females and 66% non-native english speakers. This suggests that the democratic approach of the openSUSE is not doing a terrible job of ensuring the Board is diverse by at least some measurements.

But regardless I'd like to point to a problem caused when we start looking at people through the lens of "what" they are, rather than "who" they are

...

I’d like to congratulate Ana for joining the board.

You chose to congratulate Ana (a female from Spain) but seem to have chosen to neglect congratulating Gertjan (an old male from the Netherlands) and Simon (a male from Australia)

If I apply the same logic and inference as you aim towards the project with your questions, it is easy to conclude that you may hold prejudicial feelings against men, or people of Dutch and Australian origin, or maybe old people.

This would be incongruent with the Guiding Principles which this project operates under, which clearly states "We don't tolerate social discrimination"

With all due respect, this is a non sequitur. The idea of increasing female membership in the board, and indeed in the project, is to correct a well-documented historical bias that has existed, and continues to exist, against one gender throughout disciplines; including very strongly in the technological fields. One can't say the same -- at least as far as I am aware of -- about persistent biases against Dutch or Australian people, etc. No matter what you think about the question raised by OP, speaking about the gender divide in these terms trivialises a real problem. I could say the same thing in favour of other communities who have been historically prejudiced against, without being held to your imaginary standard of "social discrimination". Projects engaged in Outreachy [1], for example (where openSUSE is notably absent, but that's another topic for another day) are not engaging in "social discrimination".

I think all 3 candidates elected in this election deserve congratulations, regardless of what they are. They are now part of an openSUSE Board who are responsible for representing all of the openSUSE community, and all races, genders, and other identifying metrics contained therein.

Yes, I agree. Nonetheless...

You state you are "along time use and supporter", and yet I can find no evidence that you congratulated Sarah for her election to the Board a year ago, despite your active involvement in the election discussions at that time.

Assuming you chose to congratulate Ana and neglect Gertjan and Simon for what they are, would it not be right to also assume you chose not to congratulate Sarah because of what she is? Doesn't that imply that you have a problem with German women, or perhaps all Germans?

...OP chooses to cheer for one of the elected board members a little bit more; does that necessitate all this reaction, really?

Do you perhaps see how this rabbit hole leads nowhere productive?

Only if you shoot right past the point.

It's important that the openSUSE Project is a free and open Project for anyone to contribute to. I promise, as part of the openSUSE Board responsible for such complaints, to tirelessly pursue and prosecute any complaint that the Project is failing in that goal.

We do not need to force our users or contributors to share their personal racial or gender identity information to accomplish that. We have no right to any data which we do not need in order to operate as a Free/Open Source Community. In fact I personally think it's very important that our users and contributors have the option to not share such sensitive information with us.

Agree with this; but perhaps we can as a project do affirmatively more to be welcoming of under represented communities, without having members share their DNA and whatnot.

I greatly appreciate the fact that we have contributors who feel able to be part of this project entirely under an identity of their choosing, perhaps one which is significantly different from the identity they hold when interacting with other communities or legal entities.

I strongly feel that such an approach is the true way to fostering diversity within openSUSE, which is a worthwhile goal, long held as part of our projects Guiding Principles.

It's one thing having a worthwhile goal, doing something worthwhile toward achieving said goal is altogether different. I, for one, would love to see the question of diversity at least discussed in the project without it being trivialised and glossed over like this. Cheers. [1] https://www.outreachy.org/ -- Atri Bhattacharya Mon 30 Apr 00:55:43 CEST 2018 Sent from openSUSE Tumbleweed 20180425 on my laptop. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, 2018-04-29 at 12:04 +0200, Knurpht @ openSUSE wrote:

Second, and not the least: You have had the chance to become a voting member,  we - the current Board - even have changed the membership conditions to make  it more accessible for anyone contributing. You could even have stepped up and  make yourself eligible for the Board.

I remember the email discussions about this topic back in February. I was excited about the suggested changes because it seemed like a fitting change to match the direction of the project. However, https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members doesn't make any mention of the changed conditions - no wonder, since the last edit was in September 2017. Assuming that the wiki page is (still) meant to describe the official rules for membership, how does that fit with the statement quoted above which implies that the rules have already been changed? Regards, Olav -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org