Greg Freemyer wrote:

At this point I don't think openSUSE has much if any of the above formality

Given that there isn't even a legal entity called "openSUSE", I doubt if we have any of what you outlined.

and I am not aware of any time I as a member am allowed to make a motion for the full membership to consider.

OTOH, are you aware of anything that would disallow it? Given the current state of affairs, I think you were entirely entitled to make the motion, just as everyone else is equally entitled to ignore it. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (5.7°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 14 January 2011 20:34:03 Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 12:39 PM, Sankar P wrote:

...

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 9:18 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

As a openSUSE member and assuming I have the privilege:

I make a motion that the openSUSE bylaws be updated to allow for formal member petitioning. And if a formal petition supported by 10 members is submitted to the board, the board must call for a all members vote on the matter addressed in the petition. If the matter concerns an improper sanction or appeal of a sanction, then the sanctioned person must be one of the petitioners.

=== details

I serve on a board. There are 2 aspects of that board that seem relevant to the current sanction discussion:

1) A sanctioned / fined person can request a hearing where they can interact with the board. But only once. We don't do it often and prefer to setup meetings specifically to address the hearing, not handle it as part of out monthly meetings. This could clearly be done via IRC for openSUSE.

I gather the disbarred person was given the opportunity to make his/her case to the board via emails, so I think this is equivalent, but a more formal IRC meeting would be even better.

2) A petition signed by 10 of the members can be brought to the board and it must be voted on by the whole! ie. if 10 members disagree with a board action (or lack of action) they can file a petition with the board and the board must call a full all member vote on the issue. Obviously this makes the issue semi-public as all members have to be informed of the issues at hand.

I don't recall this type of feature being in the openSUSE rules.

In this case, if the disbarred person feels wronged and is willing to have the issue addressed with all openSUSE members included in the communication, then he/she would simply need to get 9 other members to join him/her in petitioning for an open hearing / all members vote.

Do you propose this to be covered for all decisions of the board or for only membership related decisions ?

Sankar,

My motion is for all board related activity (or lack thereof).

But for the association for which I'm currently President:

1) Motions from non-board members can only be made at the Annual Meeting, thus a motion like I just made would be ignored unless it was made at the annual meeting.

2) I can force the board itself to override that rule by having 10 petitioners asking for a membership wide vote, but the vote is only on exactly the wording as written in the petition.

2.1) I've been in my current association for 20+ years and have never seen a petition actually brought to force a vote outside of the annual meeting, but it still acts as a form of oversight. It the board begins acting against the wishes of the community, a petition can be used to correct the issue. In our case, we have a real budget to handle. About $200,000 a year, so some form of oversight of the board is needed.

3) Since my motion involves a change to the "bylaws" it would require a 2/3rds vote. (The board does NOT have the right to change the bylaws. They can change the rules of the association, but not the bylaws. The bylaws always require a 2/3rds vote of all members.)

4) The association is a legal entity, and the bylaws are enforceable by the local court system. ie. A member can file a civil suite to ensure enforcement of the bylaws.

5) The bylaws and all amendments are filed with the State.

=== At this point I don't think openSUSE has much if any of the above formality and I am not aware of any time I as a member am allowed to make a motion for the full membership to consider.

But lacking any rule/bylaw that I can't make such a motion, I did.

I think it's definitely a necessity to have a way for the members to call out the board on a decision they have made. And this is a perfect time to bring this up - such a rule should make it to the Foundation's bylaws. I do disagree that EVERY matter will have to be publicly voted for - it would make sense in some situations to instead choose a few people from the membership to audit a decision by the board. There are cases where a NDA is in effect, or financial matters make disclosure hard. For example, sponsorship deals are usually under NDA and if say the Board decides to accept sponsorship of Oracle and the membership disagrees or isn't happy with/sure about the terms, it is something we can't handle in public. So a commision of members should audit the decision.

Greg

On Saturday 15 January 2011 16:23:59 Administrator wrote:

...

I do disagree that EVERY matter will have to be publicly voted for - it would make sense in some situations to instead choose a few people from the membership to audit a decision by the board. There are cases where a NDA is in effect, or financial matters make disclosure hard. For example, sponsorship deals are usually under NDA and if say the Board decides to accept sponsorship of Oracle and the membership disagrees or isn't happy with/sure about the terms, it is something we can't handle in public. So a commision of members should audit the decision.

This makes no sense. We vote people onto the board, and we either trust them or we don't. If we don't then we MUST demand a new board (i.e. elections). Add more (voted for) people who check on what our voted for board members are doing just makes things more complicated without adding any more democracy.

If the members' board members didn't support this action, then they should have voted against it at the board decision.

Separate from any specific action, it IS possible that people feel that the board made a bad call but that it's too much to make them resign over it. I think having at least a way to let a committee audit the board would be good. That way the members can select some people they trust can judge if the board did the right thing. If those ppl say it is so, it is so and the discussion should stop. I agree I'd rather not see it used (and I think it won't be) but having it is not bad.

Anybody who was directly connected should have recused themselves from this decision, and only participated in the discussion to clarify their personal experience.

There are two aspects outstanding at present:

1) the precedent / the correct practice: how things like this should be handled in future.

2) the decision: was it made correctly.

I would suggest the second item is best addressed by suspending the decision and putting it in front of the new board after the elections. Then there is no possibility that the elections are compromising the decision.

If you're talking about the decision that was recently taken (and which is NOT the subject of this thread) then please do what the board asked for and talk to them about it, not in public. Doesn't matter how valid your suggestions are. We've done enough damage to our own community (many people HATE discussions like this and rightly so) and our image (we've already made it to 2 major news sites with this).

The first item may benefit from further discussion, but I would suggest that this needs be done rationally and from principles rather than on the basis of a single case and what outcome we would like for that case.

Agreed.

David