25 Nov
2020
25 Nov
'20
7:17 a.m.
Hi All,
Under "by a vote of the membership where 2/3 or more of the openSUSE
members participating in the vote approve it. " I would like to propose
an amendment to the Board Election rules (Note I rather then the board).
I believe that the events in the last year have shown a weakness in at
least one part of the rules. With the upcoming regular election I
believe this is as good a time as any to address this change.
The specific section I would like to modify is the following, I know
others have spoken about making changes to some larger sections at some
point but I believe this change is small and manageable in the current
timeframe so I'd like to keep the discussions in this thread around this
topic which is:
Forced re-election:
If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
I believe that this is a very worth while concept, however the current
phrasing has left enough ambiguity that in practice it was hard to
organise cleanly. My personal view is that the people who authored this
text expected that should this ever be needed that some form of basic
petition or even just +1's to a mailing list thread would be done.
In practice it was decided that this would be too hard to verify and had
some privacy concerns and as such the election officials decided to
utilize our voting system which was a reasonable way to handle the
situation under the current wording. However it now leaves us in a
position where one or two people can call for such a vote that will
cripple the project for several weeks. I don't believe this was the
intent of the original wording as such I am proposing an alternative,
this is still in draft form so I am happy to hear other peoples
amendments and suggestions.
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting
a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more
openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for
the complete elected Board seats.
The 10 is a number that I felt is reasonable i'd be open to going
slightly up and down, its a bit of a balance if 20% of members are
interested getting 10 to contact the election officials should be easy.
At the same time it should be reasonably easy for election officials to
verify 10 members by checking the membership list and sending an email
to there registered email address asking for confirmation they sent the
original email.
There was also some questions around the 20% rather then a 50% majority,
My view is to leave this as is, if 20% of people call for a forced
election it means there is quite some disagreement in the community,
however the current board can run in the election so a different 50% of
the community could still reinstate them.
My aim is to have a finalized version ready on the 8th of December (A
week before voting starts) i'd welcome anyone and everyone's feedback
anytime before then.
Cheers
--
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
25 Nov
25 Nov
8:38 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 25/11/2020 à 07:17, Simon Lees a écrit :
10 individual members may contact the election
officials requesting
but how are designated/elected the election officials?
however the current board can run in the election so a
different 50% of
the community could still reinstate them.
this have to be made clear: in such circumstance the old board can be
candidate (individually)
(as a resignating board member can't be candidate)
no other problem for me
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
9:29 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/25/20 6:08 PM, jdd(a)dodin.org wrote:
Yep this was our interpretation of the current election rules, if anyone
believes the rules are not clear enough on this issue feel free to
propose an additional line. (Given it is the current status quo I didn't
feel the need to address it).
--
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
Le 25/11/2020 à 07:17, Simon Lees a écrit :
The election officials have a designated contact email address where
they can be contacted. Generally a few weeks before the election process
starts the chairman will contact them and confirm that they are still ok
to run the election and if not (or if they all inform the board sometime
during the year they'd like to step down) the chairman will call for new
volunteers.
10 individual members may contact the
election officials requesting
but how are designated/elected the election officials?
however the
current board can run in the election so a different 50% of
the community could still reinstate them.
this have to be made clear: in such circumstance the old board can be
candidate (individually)
10:02 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 25/11/2020 à 09:29, Simon Lees a écrit :
On 11/25/20 6:08 PM, jdd(a)dodin.org wrote:
I don't mean how to contact them, but who are them... IMHO there are too
many designated people around (election, membership), this is not sane.
I *kmow* they make a perfect job now, but in an imperfect world, any
designated people can be compromised. Sorry, my vocabulary is pretty
short in the subject, but look at Biden versus Trump, who do the
arbitration?
no offense intended, forgive poor wording :-(
thanks
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
Le 25/11/2020 à 07:17, Simon Lees a écrit :
The election officials have a designated contact email address where
they can be contacted. 10 individual members may contact the
election officials requesting
but how are designated/elected the election officials?
10:37 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am 25. November 2020 10:02:27 schrieb "jdd(a)dodin.org" <jdd(a)dodin.org>rg>:
I don't mean how to contact them, but who are
them...
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election#Election_Committee
IMHO there are too
many designated people around (election, membership), this is not sane.
Really? I don't think so. Three election officials are the bare minimum.
And membership officials are a different group so there are different
people necessary. Iirc they are a quite loose handful of people, actively
being five or so. Which is nothing insane IMHO but necessary as well.
All of the official people are doing other stuff (development, packaging
etc.) and volunteer for their official duties on top. So I thinks it's fair
to keep the workload per capita as low as possible.
Cheers,
vinz.
10:39 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am 25. November 2020 10:02:27 schrieb "jdd(a)dodin.org" <jdd(a)dodin.org>rg>:
I don't mean how to contact them, but who are
them...
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election#Election_Committee
IMHO there are too
many designated people around (election, membership), this is not sane.
Really? I don't think so. Three election officials are the bare minimum.
And membership officials are a different group so there are different
people necessary. Iirc they are a quite loose handful of people, actively
being five or so. Which is nothing insane IMHO but necessary as well.
All of the official people are doing other stuff (development, packaging
etc.) and volunteer for their official duties on top. So I thinks it's fair
to keep the workload per capita as low as possible.
Cheers,
vinz.
1:27 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 25/11/2020 à 10:39, Vinzenz Vietzke a écrit :
Am 25. November 2020 10:02:27 schrieb "jdd(a)dodin.org" <jdd(a)dodin.org>rg>:
the problem is not the number of people, but the fact they are
designated (by whom?)
election comity have to validate candidates and ballots, membership
comity have to say who can vote.
but who designate them?
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
I don't mean how to contact them, but who are
them...
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election#Election_Committee
IMHO there are too
many designated people around (election, membership), this is not sane.
Really? I don't think so. Three election officials are the bare minimum.
1:41 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am 25.11.20 um 13:27 schrieb jdd(a)dodin.org:
the problem is not the number of people, but the fact
they are
designated (by whom?)
See my other reply to this thread:
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules#Election_Committee
vinz.
1:44 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 25/11/2020 à 13:41, Vinzenz Vietzke a écrit :
Am 25.11.20 um 13:27 schrieb jdd(a)dodin.org:
I can't read this (no such title)
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
the problem is not the number of people, but the
fact they are
designated (by whom?)
See my other reply to this thread:
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules#Election_Committee
2:34 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am 25.11.20 um 13:44 schrieb jdd(a)dodin.org:
I can't read this (no such title)
Then please try this:
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules
And scroll down to the section "Election Committee". Or just use the
wiki search.
vinz.
3:41 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 25/11/2020 à 14:34, Vinzenz Vietzke a écrit :
And scroll down to the section "Election
Committee". Or just use the
wiki search.
oh, yes "appointed by the board"
that's the problem :-(
do you imagine President Trump appointing the US election board?
:-(
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
3:58 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Wed, 2020-11-25 at 15:41 +0100, jdd(a)dodin.org wrote:
Le 25/11/2020 à 14:34, Vinzenz Vietzke a écrit :
He does
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Election_Commission
"The commission consists of six members appointed by the president"
--
Richard Brown
Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team
Phone +4991174053-361
SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409
Nuernberg
(HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg)
Geschäftsführer: Felix Imendörffer
And scroll down to the section "Election
Committee". Or just use
the
wiki search.
oh, yes "appointed by the board"
that's the problem :-(
do you imagine President Trump appointing the US election board?
4:01 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 25/11/2020 à 15:58, Richard Brown a écrit :
sight :-(
thanks for the info :-(
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
On Wed, 2020-11-25 at 15:41 +0100, jdd(a)dodin.org
wrote:
do you imagine
President Trump appointing the US election board?
He does
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Election_Commission
"The commission consists of six members appointed by the president"
5 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am 25.11.20 um 16:01 schrieb jdd(a)dodin.org:
sight :-(
And leaving your continuous comparison of the board with that one
particular politician aside: it's like that in most democratic states.
The population elects their representatives and those representatives
appoint people for certain jobs to be done. I have no deep knowledge of
the French election system but the "Commission des sondages" looks like
an example for that to me.
Am 25.11.20 um 16:44 schrieb jdd(a)dodin.org:
do you imagine President Trump appointing the US
election board?
He does
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Election_Commission
"The commission consists of six members appointed by the president"
oh, yes. all members?
Well, there's the problem:
We need election officials for running elections. But who should be the
election officials for the election of election officials? And how do we
vote in the election for the election officials without having election
officials setting up the election officials election voting system?
All in all I would not want to see such an spree of votings and
elections if there is no actual incident forcing us to so.
vinz.
5:05 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am Mi, 25. Nov, 2020 um 5:00 P. M. schrieb Vinzenz Vietzke
<vinz(a)vinzv.de>de>:
Am 25.11.20 um 16:44 schrieb jdd(a)dodin.org:
I was gonna suggest membership officials as a body that could appoint
election officials, but I think then we would need the members to vote
for membership officials, which is kinda dangerous considering
membership is granted by them, so they could technically only accept
membership requests from people that favoured them, not good ;)
LCP [Stasiek]
https://lcp.world
oh, yes. all members?
Well, there's the problem:
We need election officials for running elections. But who should be
the
election officials for the election of election officials? And how do
we
vote in the election for the election officials without having
election
officials setting up the election officials election voting system?
All in all I would not want to see such an spree of votings and
elections if there is no actual incident forcing us to so. 
5:38 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Hello community,
just for giving you an example of how these things are handled on
other projects, this is how The Document Foundation - TDF
(LibreOffice) addressed this topic.
This is obviously a shot summary and I can expand it more if you are
interested. ;)
TDF has 3 official bodies: the Membership Committee, the Board of
Directors, the Board of Trustees.
1) The Board of Trustees is the group of official members.
The members are the unique ones that can vote for the elections of
Board of Directors and Membership Committee.
The membership is renewed every year and for being a member is
required to be an active contributor.
The membership is a mandatory requirement for running for Board of
Directors and Membership Committee.
2) Membership Committee (MC) is the official body handling the
membership (new and renewal).
The MC oversees what the Board is also doing and checks that the
decisions taken are in line with the statutes.
For being elected in the MC it's mandatory to be a member of the Board
of Trustees.
The MC is re-elected every 2 years.
A MC member can't be elected also in the BoD at the same time.
The MC is running and overseeing the BoD elections.
3) Board of Directors (BoD).
For being elected in the BoD it's mandatory to be a member of the
Board of Trustees.
The BoD is re-elected every 2 years.
A BoD member can't be elected also in the MC.
The BoD is running and overseeing the MC elections.
- https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/bodies/
- https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/statutes/
My two cents,
Marina
--
Marina Latini
openSUSE Board: deneb_alpha
www.documentfoundation.org
www.libreitalia.org
5:53 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 17:05:57 +0100
Stasiek Michalski <hellcp(a)opensuse.org> wrote:
Am Mi, 25. Nov, 2020 um 5:00 P. M. schrieb Vinzenz
Vietzke
<vinz(a)vinzv.de>de>:
Having the membership officials doing that to me seems less
appropriate considering that they are also appointed by the board. It's
an unecessary redundancy in my opinion.
However beacause the board is already elected through a vote of the
membership, I think we can accept and trust this "elected" body to
appoint the next Election Committee. I don't see particular reasons to
change this :).
--
Maurizio Galli (m4u9)
Xfce Team
https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Xfce
Am 25.11.20 um 16:44 schrieb jdd(a)dodin.org:
I was gonna suggest membership officials as a body that could appoint
election officials, but I think then we would need the members to vote
for membership officials, which is kinda dangerous considering
membership is granted by them, so they could technically only accept
membership requests from people that favoured them, not good ;)
oh, yes. all members?
Well, there's the problem:
We need election officials for running elections. But who should be
the
election officials for the election of election officials? And how
do we
vote in the election for the election officials without having
election
officials setting up the election officials election voting system?
All in all I would not want to see such an spree of votings and
elections if there is no actual incident forcing us to so.
26 Nov
26 Nov
3:37 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/26/20 3:23 AM, Maurizio Galli wrote:
On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 17:05:57 +0100
Stasiek Michalski <hellcp(a)opensuse.org> wrote:
Yeah that is kinda my thought as well, I think that this is something
that could be discussed independently of this change, certainly if its
something that is important to a significant part of the community i'd
probably support it. However i'm not really passionate enough about it
to write a proposal and push it. As the board we will soon be working on
merging the rules around the membership officials into the same document
as the board election rules which will make it easier for someone to
then draft proposed changes in this area.
Cheers
--
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
Am Mi, 25. Nov, 2020 um 5:00 P. M. schrieb
Vinzenz Vietzke
<vinz(a)vinzv.de>de>:
Having the membership officials doing that to me seems less
appropriate considering that they are also appointed by the board. It's
an unecessary redundancy in my opinion.
However beacause the board is already elected through a vote of the
membership, I think we can accept and trust this "elected" body to
appoint the next Election Committee. I don't see particular reasons to
change this :). Am 25.11.20 um 16:44 schrieb jdd(a)dodin.org:
I was gonna suggest membership officials as a body that could appoint
election officials, but I think then we would need the members to vote
for membership officials, which is kinda dangerous considering
membership is granted by them, so they could technically only accept
membership requests from people that favoured them, not good ;)
oh, yes. all members?
Well, there's the problem:
We need election officials for running elections. But who should be
the
election officials for the election of election officials? And how
do we
vote in the election for the election officials without having
election
officials setting up the election officials election voting system?
All in all I would not want to see such an spree of votings and
elections if there is no actual incident forcing us to so. 
25 Nov
25 Nov
11:58 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/25/20 8:00 AM, Vinzenz Vietzke wrote:
Well, there's the problem:
We need election officials for running elections. But who should be the
election officials for the election of election officials? And how do we
vote in the election for the election officials without having election
officials setting up the election officials election voting system?
To make the contrariness-pushers happy, how about we have Microsoft vote
for the election officials?
;-)
--
-Gerry Makaro
Fraser-Bell on Github
4:37 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am Mi., 25. Nov. 2020 um 15:58 Uhr schrieb Richard Brown <rbrown(a)suse.de>de>:
On Wed, 2020-11-25 at 15:41 +0100, jdd(a)dodin.org
wrote:
"and confirmed by the Senate"
Now what shall be our Senate?
Best
Martin
do you imagine President Trump appointing the US
election board?
He does
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Election_Commission
"The commission consists of six members appointed by the president"
4:44 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 25/11/2020 à 16:37, Martin Schröder a écrit :
oh, yes. all members?
on the foundation project (still actual?), there could be a subset of
the members, may be elected, or by any other mean (volunteers sorted by
membership date?)
by the way this could be done later, after the present board election
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
"The
commission consists of six members appointed by the president"
"and
confirmed by the Senate"
Now what shall be our Senate?
26 Nov
26 Nov
4:12 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/26/20 2:07 AM, Martin Schröder wrote:
Am Mi., 25. Nov. 2020 um 15:58 Uhr schrieb Richard
Brown <rbrown(a)suse.de>de>:
Well our process is much more along the lines of people nominate
themselves for the role and the board plays the role of the senate in
confirming there appointment.
--
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 Wed, 2020-11-25 at 15:41 +0100, jdd(a)dodin.org
wrote:
"and confirmed by the Senate"
Now what shall be our Senate? do you imagine President Trump appointing the US
election board?
He does
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Election_Commission
"The commission consists of six members appointed by the president" 
25 Nov
25 Nov
10:39 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
I think I speak for all the election officials. No offence taken. Even
as an election official the mechanics of my appointment are unknown to
me, I just see it as an honour to serve the community / project I am
passionate about.
FYI we have a code of conduct not to make any comment on any candidate.
More than one of us always doing the number checking. We also check all
and agree all communications before making them.
I'm not saying the system is perfect, but we stay out of the "politics"
and remain totally unbiased.
Cheers,
Ariez
ajv(a)opensuse.org
On 25/11/2020 17:02, jdd(a)dodin.org wrote:
> Le 25/11/2020 à 09:29, Simon Lees a écrit :
>>
>>
>> On 11/25/20 6:08 PM, jdd(a)dodin.org wrote:
>>> Le 25/11/2020 à 07:17, Simon Lees a écrit :
>>>
>>>> 10 individual members may contact the election officials
>>>> requesting
>>>
>>> but how are designated/elected the election officials?
>>>
>>
>> The election officials have a designated contact email address where
>> they can be contacted.
>
> I don't mean how to contact them, but who are them... IMHO there are
> too many designated people around (election, membership), this is not
> sane.
>
> I *kmow* they make a perfect job now, but in an imperfect world, any
> designated people can be compromised. Sorry, my vocabulary is pretty
> short in the subject, but look at Biden versus Trump, who do the
> arbitration?
>
> no offense intended, forgive poor wording :-(
>
> thanks
> jdd
>
11:05 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am 25. November 2020 10:40:12 schrieb Ariez Vachha <ajv(a)opensuse.org>rg>:
I think I speak for all the election officials. No
offence taken. Even
as an election official the mechanics of my appointment are unknown to
me, I just see it as an honour to serve the community / project I am
passionate about.
No real "mechanics" there, it's pretty simple:
People volunteer for the job, the board "has look at them" i.e. talks to
them and checks if they are known to the community.
Then the board appointments the person(s) per our election rules.
vinz.
11:08 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am Mittwoch, 25. November 2020, 11:05:17 CET schrieb Vinzenz Vietzke:
Am 25. November 2020 10:40:12 schrieb Ariez Vachha
<ajv(a)opensuse.org>rg>:
..and people stay active as long as they wish, and declare if they decide to
step down. For election & membership officials are no defined service periods
(as the 2 years for board members)
Cheers
Axel
I think I speak for all the election officials.
No offence taken. Even
as an election official the mechanics of my appointment are unknown to
me, I just see it as an honour to serve the community / project I am
passionate about.
No real "mechanics" there, it's pretty simple:
People volunteer for the job, the board "has look at them" i.e. talks to
them and checks if they are known to the community.
Then the board appointments the person(s) per our election rules. 
11:06 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Dne středa 25. listopadu 2020 10:39:59 CET, Ariez Vachha napsal(a):
Even as an election official the mechanics of my
appointment are
unknown to me, I just see it as an honour to serve the community
/ project I am passionate about.
I think You do great job, I'd just agree that the process of entering as well
as leaving, selection procedure, etc. should be formally described in rules.
--
Vojtěch Zeisek
https://trapa.cz/
Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu
Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux
https://www.opensuse.org/
11:10 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am Mittwoch, 25. November 2020, 11:06:56 CET schrieb Vojtěch Zeisek:
Dne středa 25. listopadu 2020 10:39:59 CET, Ariez
Vachha napsal(a):
I think You do great job, I'd just agree that the
process of entering as
well as leaving, selection procedure, etc. should be formally described in
rules.
We had this topic on the agenda of the board session yesterday. Most of this
is already in the election rules. Simon volunteered to clarify and link into
the respective wiki pages.
(Spoiler alert for the coming meeting minutes :-)
Cheers
Axel
11:11 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Am 25. November 2020 11:07:15 schrieb Vojtěch Zeisek
<vojtech.zeisek(a)opensuse.org>rg>:
Dne středa 25. listopadu 2020 10:39:59 CET, Ariez
Vachha napsal(a):
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules#Election_Committee:
That could be written a bit more extensive. On the other hand, it works and
there were no concerns up to now at least to my knowledge.
vinz.
Even as an election official the mechanics of my
appointment are
unknown to me, I just see it as an honour to serve the community
/ project I am passionate about.
I think You do great job, I'd just agree that the process of entering as well
as leaving, selection procedure, etc. should be formally described in rules. 
9:07 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Simon Lees wrote:
My aim is to have a finalized version ready on the 8th
of December (A
week before voting starts) i'd welcome anyone and everyone's feedback
anytime before then.
Why this urgency, it sounds like something that could easily be brought
up after the current elections ?
--
Per Jessen, Zürich (2.5°C)
Member, openSUSE Heroes
9:25 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/25/20 6:37 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
No real urgency, I intentionally bought it up now so that the vote on
the amendment can happen as a part of the current election process ie an
additional question rather then holding a separate vote early next year.
I'm confident that there is enough time now and if I become no longer
comfortable I wont ask the election officials to include it as part of
the upcoming election. But really in my opinion this is a pretty small
change.
--
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
My aim is to have a finalized version ready on
the 8th of December (A
week before voting starts) i'd welcome anyone and everyone's feedback
anytime before then.
Why this urgency, it sounds like something that could easily be brought
up after the current elections ?
10:24 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Fellow Geekos,
Speaking as an election official, the hardest parts of the "Forced
re-election" affair was:
* Not having any guidelines in the rules as to how a Forced re-election
can be triggered, which is what Simon's suggestion is trying to address.
* No guidelines as to how 20% is to be counted. - This led to us having
to use a voting tool Helios as a petition tool which in turn caused a
lot of confusion, especially as we had to have an election for a board
resignation anyway.
So there is definitely some thinking to be done. I personally like
Simon's idea but would prefer rather than a fixed number like 10 we
express it as a percentage of the membership. Taking approximately 500
members then 20% = 100 and 10 = 2%. I would feel 3 to 4% would be a
better indication of real support. Also if we get the required number
how is the 20% to be measured. At the moment the only tool we have is
another petition, using Helios!
In my mind I feel the ultimate solution would be some form of petition
tool so members themselves can set up a petition, only open to members,
and directly garner the 20%. This can then be vetted by the election
officials and then addressed accordingly. The same tool could also be
used to direct the direction of the project itself. That said there
would have to be appropriate check and balances in the system to ensure
it does not get "hijacked".
Just some feedback for discussion...
Cheers,
Ariez
ajv(a)opensuse.org
On 25/11/2020 14:17, Simon Lees wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Under "by a vote of the membership where 2/3 or more of the openSUSE
> members participating in the vote approve it. " I would like to propose
> an amendment to the Board Election rules (Note I rather then the board).
>
> I believe that the events in the last year have shown a weakness in at
> least one part of the rules. With the upcoming regular election I
> believe this is as good a time as any to address this change.
>
> The specific section I would like to modify is the following, I know
> others have spoken about making changes to some larger sections at some
> point but I believe this change is small and manageable in the current
> timeframe so I'd like to keep the discussions in this thread around this
> topic which is:
>
> Forced re-election:
> If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
> an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
>
> I believe that this is a very worth while concept, however the current
> phrasing has left enough ambiguity that in practice it was hard to
> organise cleanly. My personal view is that the people who authored this
> text expected that should this ever be needed that some form of basic
> petition or even just +1's to a mailing list thread would be done.
>
> In practice it was decided that this would be too hard to verify and had
> some privacy concerns and as such the election officials decided to
> utilize our voting system which was a reasonable way to handle the
> situation under the current wording. However it now leaves us in a
> position where one or two people can call for such a vote that will
> cripple the project for several weeks. I don't believe this was the
> intent of the original wording as such I am proposing an alternative,
> this is still in draft form so I am happy to hear other peoples
> amendments and suggestions.
>
> Forced re-election:
> 10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting
> a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more
> openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for
> the complete elected Board seats.
>
>
> The 10 is a number that I felt is reasonable i'd be open to going
> slightly up and down, its a bit of a balance if 20% of members are
> interested getting 10 to contact the election officials should be easy.
> At the same time it should be reasonably easy for election officials to
> verify 10 members by checking the membership list and sending an email
> to there registered email address asking for confirmation they sent the
> original email.
>
> There was also some questions around the 20% rather then a 50% majority,
> My view is to leave this as is, if 20% of people call for a forced
> election it means there is quite some disagreement in the community,
> however the current board can run in the election so a different 50% of
> the community could still reinstate them.
>
> My aim is to have a finalized version ready on the 8th of December (A
> week before voting starts) i'd welcome anyone and everyone's feedback
> anytime before then.
>
> Cheers
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> _______________________________________________
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https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/election-officials@lists.opensuse.…
10:42 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le mercredi 25 novembre 2020 à 17:24 +0800, Ariez Vachha a écrit :
So there is definitely some thinking to be done. I
personally like
Simon's idea but would prefer rather than a fixed number like 10 we
express it as a percentage of the membership. Taking approximately 500
members then 20% = 100 and 10 = 2%. I would feel 3 to 4% would be a
better indication of real support.
FWIW, I believe that anything expressed as a percentage (including the
20% rule that we already have) is broken right now as, to my knowledge,
inactive members are still counted in the total members, while they will
not vote. We should only consider a list of active members for such
percentages.
Or are we already asking members to move to "Members Emeritus" when no
activity is recorded?
Cheers,
Vincent
--
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.
1:15 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/25/20 8:12 PM, Vincent Untz wrote:
Le mercredi 25 novembre 2020 à 17:24 +0800, Ariez
Vachha a écrit :
4-5 years ago someone wrote a script that went through obs, github,
mailing lists etc and sent everyone it didn't detect an email asking if
they still wished to be a member, there was some false positives and
some less active contributors who still wished to be members but that
was how most if not all the inactive members were moved. That dropped us
back down to around 400 members from which it has increased again, most
significantly around the name vote. Maybe its around time that we did
similar again in the new year after this election, I don't know who was
responsible for the script used and how easy it is to find but I believe
it was a significant amount of effort.
The reason I went for 10 rather then 2% etc is because my main concern
was not allowing one or a handful of people trigger the clause, In the
context of triggering the creation of a petition I don't see a huge
difference between 8 and 25 people, so I went with a number that doesn't
create too much work more work then can be avoided for the election
officials. In the end this extra step is a bit of a compromise, in an
ideal world there would be some way for the 20% to trigger an election
without outside help but I can't see a way of making that happen.
--
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
So there is definitely some thinking to be done.
I personally like
Simon's idea but would prefer rather than a fixed number like 10 we
express it as a percentage of the membership. Taking approximately 500
members then 20% = 100 and 10 = 2%. I would feel 3 to 4% would be a
better indication of real support.
FWIW, I believe that anything expressed as a percentage (including the
20% rule that we already have) is broken right now as, to my knowledge,
inactive members are still counted in the total members, while they will
not vote. We should only consider a list of active members for such
percentages.
Or are we already asking members to move to "Members Emeritus" when no
activity is recorded? 
4:04 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
* Vincent Untz <vuntz(a)opensuse.org> [11-25-20 04:45]:
Le mercredi 25 novembre 2020 à 17:24 +0800, Ariez
Vachha a écrit :
a strict definition of "active" vs "inactive" is necessary.
--
(paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode
So there is definitely some thinking to be done.
I personally like
Simon's idea but would prefer rather than a fixed number like 10 we
express it as a percentage of the membership. Taking approximately 500
members then 20% = 100 and 10 = 2%. I would feel 3 to 4% would be a
better indication of real support.
FWIW, I believe that anything expressed as a percentage (including the
20% rule that we already have) is broken right now as, to my knowledge,
inactive members are still counted in the total members, while they will
not vote. We should only consider a list of active members for such
percentages.
26 Nov
26 Nov
2:06 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/26/20 1:34 AM, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Vincent Untz <vuntz(a)opensuse.org> [11-25-20
04:45]:
The current definition of active is anyone on the membership list, in
the past we have used other methods to clean up the membership list. In
my opinion its probably better to address cleaning up the membership
list separately as we have in the past.
--
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
Le mercredi 25 novembre 2020 à 17:24 +0800, Ariez
Vachha a écrit :
a strict definition of "active" vs "inactive" is necessary.
So there is definitely some thinking to be done.
I personally like
Simon's idea but would prefer rather than a fixed number like 10 we
express it as a percentage of the membership. Taking approximately 500
members then 20% = 100 and 10 = 2%. I would feel 3 to 4% would be a
better indication of real support.
FWIW, I believe that anything expressed as a percentage (including the
20% rule that we already have) is broken right now as, to my knowledge,
inactive members are still counted in the total members, while they will
not vote. We should only consider a list of active members for such
percentages.
2:43 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
* Simon Lees <sflees(a)suse.de> [11-25-20 20:08]:
On 11/26/20 1:34 AM, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
[-- Error: unable to create PGP subprocess! --]
if that is the definition of active, you have absolutely no criteria for
removing "inactive" members, ie: cleaning up the membership list.
"active" must be defined, not just understood.
--
(paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode
* Vincent Untz <vuntz(a)opensuse.org>
[11-25-20 04:45]:
The current definition of active is anyone on the membership list, in
the past we have used other methods to clean up the membership list. In
my opinion its probably better to address cleaning up the membership
list separately as we have in the past. Le mercredi 25 novembre 2020 à 17:24 +0800, Ariez
Vachha a écrit :
a strict definition of "active" vs "inactive" is necessary.
So there is definitely some thinking to be done.
I personally like
Simon's idea but would prefer rather than a fixed number like 10 we
express it as a percentage of the membership. Taking approximately 500
members then 20% = 100 and 10 = 2%. I would feel 3 to 4% would be a
better indication of real support.
FWIW, I believe that anything expressed as a percentage (including the
20% rule that we already have) is broken right now as, to my knowledge,
inactive members are still counted in the total members, while they will
not vote. We should only consider a list of active members for such
percentages.
4:09 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/26/20 12:13 PM, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Simon Lees <sflees(a)suse.de> [11-25-20 20:08]:
A previous board came up with this [1] definition and process, given it
is now close to 5 years since it was done last if someone can find that
script or feels like writing a replacement then it is probably worth
running it again in the new year. It seems like last time, which was
also the first time we made around 1/3rd of members 'inactive' the
active member list went from around 600 down to 400, I think we are now
back around 500 but the name change vote had a significant impact on
getting people who probably should have already been members to
officially become members.
Again, if there was enough concern around this we could add a rule that
every X years inactive members are asked whether they still wish to be
members but this would be hard to write it would be also hard to enforce
(what do you do to a board that runs out of time or forgets to do such a
clean up). So in my opinion given we ended up with a process that works
without needing to create a rule around it I tend to be in favor of not
explicitly adding it. Again unless a significant group of the membership
expressed concern that we don't have a rule covering it.
1. https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2016-03/msg00036.html
--
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 11/26/20 1:34 AM, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
[-- Error: unable to create PGP subprocess! --]
if that is the definition of active, you have absolutely no criteria for
removing "inactive" members, ie: cleaning up the membership list.
"active" must be defined, not just understood. * Vincent Untz <vuntz(a)opensuse.org>
[11-25-20 04:45]:
The current definition of active is anyone on the membership list, in
the past we have used other methods to clean up the membership list. In
my opinion its probably better to address cleaning up the membership
list separately as we have in the past. Le mercredi 25 novembre 2020 à 17:24 +0800, Ariez
Vachha a écrit :
> So there is definitely some thinking to be done. I personally like
> Simon's idea but would prefer rather than a fixed number like 10 we
> express it as a percentage of the membership. Taking approximately 500
> members then 20% = 100 and 10 = 2%. I would feel 3 to 4% would be a
> better indication of real support.
FWIW, I believe that anything expressed as a percentage (including the
20% rule that we already have) is broken right now as, to my knowledge,
inactive members are still counted in the total members, while they will
not vote. We should only consider a list of active members for such
percentages.
a strict definition of "active" vs "inactive" is necessary.
8:45 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le jeudi 26 novembre 2020 à 13:39 +1030, Simon Lees a écrit :
Again, if there was enough concern around this we
could add a rule
that every X years inactive members are asked whether they still wish
to be members but this would be hard to write it would be also hard to
enforce (what do you do to a board that runs out of time or forgets to
do such a clean up). So in my opinion given we ended up with a process
that works without needing to create a rule around it I tend to be in
favor of not explicitly adding it. Again unless a significant group of
the membership expressed concern that we don't have a rule covering
it.
Assuming you're referring to the process that was used to trim the
membership list from 600 to 400, it may be working but it's not actively
used.
I'll phrase my concern again: if we have a rule saying that "20% of the
membership is required for something", then it does matter a lot that we
keep the list of members up-to-date: there's a huge difference between
20% of 600 and 20% of 400.
And to be clear: this is independent of the next elections, and only
loosely related to the change you're proposing -- I don't intend my
comment to block any of these two things. But I strongly believe this
should be addressed.
Vincent
--
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.
12:37 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/26/20 6:15 PM, Vincent Untz wrote:
Le jeudi 26 novembre 2020 à 13:39 +1030, Simon Lees a
écrit :
Yeah for me the question is whether we address this "formally" by
modifying the rules, or "informally" by running that previous process
slightly more regularly. The 600 -> 400 was from the start of the
project till 2016, I think once every 4-5 years is probably reasonable,
otherwise we start to bug the false positives too much.
--
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
Again, if there was enough concern around this we
could add a rule
that every X years inactive members are asked whether they still wish
to be members but this would be hard to write it would be also hard to
enforce (what do you do to a board that runs out of time or forgets to
do such a clean up). So in my opinion given we ended up with a process
that works without needing to create a rule around it I tend to be in
favor of not explicitly adding it. Again unless a significant group of
the membership expressed concern that we don't have a rule covering
it.
Assuming you're referring to the process that was used to trim the
membership list from 600 to 400, it may be working but it's not actively
used.
I'll phrase my concern again: if we have a rule saying that "20% of the
membership is required for something", then it does matter a lot that we
keep the list of members up-to-date: there's a huge difference between
20% of 600 and 20% of 400.
And to be clear: this is independent of the next elections, and only
loosely related to the change you're proposing -- I don't intend my
comment to block any of these two things. But I strongly believe this
should be addressed.
4:33 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
* Simon Lees <sflees(a)suse.de> [11-26-20 06:39]:
On 11/26/20 6:15 PM, Vincent Untz wrote:
[-- Error: unable to create PGP subprocess! --]
if you intend to continue in that manner, anyone attempting to publicly
define "inactive" is kicking a dead horse.
--
(paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode
Le jeudi 26 novembre 2020 à 13:39 +1030, Simon
Lees a écrit :
Yeah for me the question is whether we address this "formally" by
modifying the rules, or "informally" by running that previous process
slightly more regularly. The 600 -> 400 was from the start of the
project till 2016, I think once every 4-5 years is probably reasonable,
otherwise we start to bug the false positives too much.
Again, if there was enough concern around this we
could add a rule
that every X years inactive members are asked whether they still wish
to be members but this would be hard to write it would be also hard to
enforce (what do you do to a board that runs out of time or forgets to
do such a clean up). So in my opinion given we ended up with a process
that works without needing to create a rule around it I tend to be in
favor of not explicitly adding it. Again unless a significant group of
the membership expressed concern that we don't have a rule covering
it.
Assuming you're referring to the process that was used to trim the
membership list from 600 to 400, it may be working but it's not actively
used.
I'll phrase my concern again: if we have a rule saying that "20% of the
membership is required for something", then it does matter a lot that we
keep the list of members up-to-date: there's a huge difference between
20% of 600 and 20% of 400.
And to be clear: this is independent of the next elections, and only
loosely related to the change you're proposing -- I don't intend my
comment to block any of these two things. But I strongly believe this
should be addressed.
27 Nov
27 Nov
8:23 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/27/20 2:03 AM, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* Simon Lees <sflees(a)suse.de> [11-26-20 06:39]:
How so? my opinion is only one of around 500 that matter on this issue.
Anyone can put forward a proposal to amend our rules. It does remind me
thought that the current Rules don't mention 'Member Emeritus' and
probably should, I will ask the board to use there 2/3rds majority
powers to update the rules to reflect the current state.
Member Emeritus:
Emeritus members are past openSUSE Members that have been identified
as inactive, they are no longer eligible to vote.
A Member Emeritus may contact the Membership Committee at any time
and have there membership reinstated.
From here it shouldn't be too hard for someone to add additional further
lines if they feel its necessary.
--
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 11/26/20 6:15 PM, Vincent Untz wrote:
if you intend to continue in that manner, anyone attempting to publicly
define "inactive" is kicking a dead horse.
Le jeudi 26 novembre 2020 à 13:39 +1030, Simon
Lees a écrit :
Yeah for me the question is whether we address this "formally" by
modifying the rules, or "informally" by running that previous process
slightly more regularly. The 600 -> 400 was from the start of the
project till 2016, I think once every 4-5 years is probably reasonable,
otherwise we start to bug the false positives too much.
Again, if there was enough concern around this we
could add a rule
that every X years inactive members are asked whether they still wish
to be members but this would be hard to write it would be also hard to
enforce (what do you do to a board that runs out of time or forgets to
do such a clean up). So in my opinion given we ended up with a process
that works without needing to create a rule around it I tend to be in
favor of not explicitly adding it. Again unless a significant group of
the membership expressed concern that we don't have a rule covering
it.
Assuming you're referring to the process that was used to trim the
membership list from 600 to 400, it may be working but it's not actively
used.
I'll phrase my concern again: if we have a rule saying that "20% of the
membership is required for something", then it does matter a lot that we
keep the list of members up-to-date: there's a huge difference between
20% of 600 and 20% of 400.
And to be clear: this is independent of the next elections, and only
loosely related to the change you're proposing -- I don't intend my
comment to block any of these two things. But I strongly believe this
should be addressed. 
16 Dec
16 Dec
12:42 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Hi Simon,
On Fri 2020-11-27, Simon Lees wrote:
the current Rules don't mention 'Member
Emeritus' and probably should,
I will ask the board to use there 2/3rds majority powers to update the
rules to reflect the current state.
Member Emeritus:
Emeritus members are past openSUSE Members that have been identified
as inactive, they are no longer eligible to vote.
A Member Emeritus may contact the Membership Committee at any time
and have there membership reinstated.
From here it shouldn't be too hard for someone to add additional further
lines if they feel its necessary.
Yep. If you plan on proposing this, the board meeting next week may
be the last regular one this year (and of the current board).
If you want to pursue that, can you please mail a concrete proposal
in a new thread to increase the chance of everyone seeing it.
Potentially open questions:
- How does "identified as inactive" work, and by who?
Maybe quantify this by "inactive for at least a year"?
- Is the request to be reinstantiated sufficient, or will they undergo
a regular application process like someone who is completely new?
If the former, maybe "[membership reinstated] without further
requirements"?
Thanks,
Gerald
PS: And "there" -> "their". ;-)
28 Nov
28 Nov
12:07 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Hello,
Am Donnerstag, 26. November 2020, 16:33:47 CET schrieb Patrick Shanahan:
* Simon Lees <sflees(a)suse.de> [11-26-20 06:39]:
> Yeah for me the question is whether we address this "formally" by
> modifying the rules, or "informally" by running that previous
> process slightly more regularly. The 600 -> 400 was from the start
> of the project till 2016, I think once every 4-5 years is probably
> reasonable, otherwise we start to bug the false positives too much.
The 600 -> 400 shows that it wasn't done often enough and made the 20%
clause technically a 30% clause, which makes the board basically
untouchable. (In case you wonder - that's not only my own opinion, it
was part of a board statement some years ago [1].)
Therefore I'd vote for doing the cleanup once per year or every two
years. Maybe it's a bit annoying, but it's worth it.
if you intend to continue in that manner, anyone
attempting to
publicly define "inactive" is kicking a dead horse.
Indeed ;-)
The definition of an "active" member back then was (and I think it still
makes sense) that someone at least cares enough to answer the mail and
says "I want to stay a member". Of course, still being active (either
detectable by the script [2] or doing other things like running
conference booths) also counts.
The only goal was to get rid of what the german term "Karteileiche"
describes. ("Karteileiche literally means "card index corpse", but a) it
looses a lot during the translation and b) that translation sounds more
harsh than it's meant.)
This makes defining inactive members easy:
- no visible actions on mailinglists, bugzilla etc. (detectable by the
script, if we continue to use it)
- no answer to the mail asking if he/she wants to stay a member
- having an outdated, undeliverable mail address as target of the
@opensuse.org address so that the mail asking if he/she wants to stay
a member can't be delivered
Actually undeliverable mails might be the biggest risk to loose
membership - for example, last time I checked, about 10 members still
had their @novell.com address listed. And that's just the obvious and
very visible part of non-deliverable mail addresses.
(While speaking about this: if your @opensuse.org mail address points to
an old/outdated mail address, write to admin AT opensuse.org to get it
updated. Also note that changing the mail address in your openSUSE
account isn't enough.)
Regards,
Christian Boltz
[1] https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2018-02/msg00015.html
(search for "20%")
[2] I remember that the script did "funny things" and flagged several
quite active people as inactive.
There also was the idea to simply send a mail to all members and to
ask them if they still want to be a member. This might be slightly
annoying for the members, but OTOH it's much easier to implement,
more privacy-friendly, and avoids to upset active contributors who
don't get detected as active - the non-random signature is from such
a case ;-)
--
The second mail worried me a bit, and hopefully in the 30 next secondes
the bot send its apologies, that it still under drugs, and need a
doctor. [Bruno Friedmann in opensuse-project]
1:31 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Hi,
I agree with the overall idea of having real member count figures.
Keeping them high artificially is nothing good, both for community
processes and the impression gives to anyone.
Am 28.11.20 um 00:07 schrieb Christian Boltz:
This makes defining inactive members easy:
- no visible actions on mailinglists, bugzilla etc. (detectable by the
script, if we continue to use it)
- no answer to the mail asking if he/she wants to stay a member
- having an outdated, undeliverable mail address as target of the
@opensuse.org address so that the mail asking if he/she wants to stay
a member can't be delivered
Actually undeliverable mails might be the biggest risk to loose
membership - for example, last time I checked, about 10 members still
had their @novell.com address listed. And that's just the obvious and
very visible part of non-deliverable mail addresses.
I'd run these steps in sequence to strain out definitely inactive
members step by step:
1) check for activity within the past 12 months by script
2) contact via email @opensuse.org (and the one it's pointing to directly)
3) check connect-o-o profile for other ways to contact
4) do a quick web search
The latter two are optional and mostly depend on how many inactive
members are left over after 1) and 2).
As a side note:
Keeping your member's roster in order is desired for associations under
German law, like political parties or the e.V. Without having checked I
assume there's something similar for foundations. We'd be doing some
fundamental work with the regular cleanup, so to say.
vinz.
26 Nov
26 Nov
4:18 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Op donderdag 26 november 2020 02:43:17 CET schreef Patrick Shanahan:
Should we consider this as coming from volunteer #1 putting himself up for
doing this?
--
Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht
openSUSE Forums Team
The current
definition of active is anyone on the membership list, in
the past we have used other methods to clean up the membership list. In
my opinion its probably better to address cleaning up the membership
list separately as we have in the past.
[-- Error: unable to create PGP subprocess! --]
if that is the definition of active, you have absolutely no criteria for
removing "inactive" members, ie: cleaning up the membership list.
"active" must be defined, not just understood.
5:54 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
* Knurpht-openSUSE <knurpht(a)opensuse.org> [11-25-20 22:20]:
Op donderdag 26 november 2020 02:43:17 CET schreef
Patrick Shanahan:
Should we consider this as coming from volunteer #1 putting himself up for
doing this?
I will think about it. as I do not believe one can arbitarily designate
that a current member is not longer a member w/o defining some criteria to
make that designation. a premise so basic as this deserves more.
--
(paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode
The
current definition of active is anyone on the membership list, in
the past we have used other methods to clean up the membership list. In
my opinion its probably better to address cleaning up the membership
list separately as we have in the past.
[-- Error: unable to create PGP subprocess! --]
if that is the definition of active, you have absolutely no criteria for
removing "inactive" members, ie: cleaning up the membership list.
"active" must be defined, not just understood.
25 Nov
25 Nov
6:02 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Wed 2020-11-25, Simon Lees wrote:
however the current board can run in the [forced]
election
This is my understanding, too, after carefully studying the election
rules and associated material. Richard, too, confirmed that indeed was
the original intention.
Still this will be good to make explicit, so appending something like
"All current board members are eligible to run in that election".
after
"If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats."
This is not a change, so maybe we should/could clarify with 2/3 of
the board (or even the full board) approving to keep the subject of
the change to be voted on simpler.
Gerald
26 Nov
26 Nov
4:17 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/26/20 3:32 AM, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
On Wed 2020-11-25, Simon Lees wrote:
That works for me.
--
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
however the current board can run in the [forced]
election
This is my understanding, too, after carefully studying the election
rules and associated material. Richard, too, confirmed that indeed was
the original intention.
Still this will be good to make explicit, so appending something like
"All current board members are eligible to run in that election".
after
"If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats."
This is not a change, so maybe we should/could clarify with 2/3 of
the board (or even the full board) approving to keep the subject of
the change to be voted on simpler.
25 Nov
25 Nov
11:50 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 11/24/20 10:17 PM, Simon Lees wrote:
Hi All,
Under "by a vote of the membership where 2/3 or more of the openSUSE
members participating in the vote approve it. " I would like to propose
an amendment to the Board Election rules (Note I rather then the board).
I believe that the events in the last year have shown a weakness in at
least one part of the rules. With the upcoming regular election I
believe this is as good a time as any to address this change.
The specific section I would like to modify is the following, I know
others have spoken about making changes to some larger sections at some
point but I believe this change is small and manageable in the current
timeframe so I'd like to keep the discussions in this thread around this
topic which is:
Forced re-election:
If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
I believe that this is a very worth while concept, however the current
phrasing has left enough ambiguity that in practice it was hard to
organise cleanly. My personal view is that the people who authored this
text expected that should this ever be needed that some form of basic
petition or even just +1's to a mailing list thread would be done.
In practice it was decided that this would be too hard to verify and had
some privacy concerns and as such the election officials decided to
utilize our voting system which was a reasonable way to handle the
situation under the current wording. However it now leaves us in a
position where one or two people can call for such a vote that will
cripple the project for several weeks. I don't believe this was the
intent of the original wording as such I am proposing an alternative,
this is still in draft form so I am happy to hear other peoples
amendments and suggestions.
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting
a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more
openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for
the complete elected Board seats.
The 10 is a number that I felt is reasonable i'd be open to going
slightly up and down, its a bit of a balance if 20% of members are
interested getting 10 to contact the election officials should be easy.
At the same time it should be reasonably easy for election officials to
verify 10 members by checking the membership list and sending an email
to there registered email address asking for confirmation they sent the
original email.
There was also some questions around the 20% rather then a 50% majority,
My view is to leave this as is, if 20% of people call for a forced
election it means there is quite some disagreement in the community,
however the current board can run in the election so a different 50% of
the community could still reinstate them.
My aim is to have a finalized version ready on the 8th of December (A
week before voting starts) i'd welcome anyone and everyone's feedback
anytime before then.
This is something I would eagerly support.
--
-Gerry Makaro
Fraser-Bell on Github
27 Nov
27 Nov
11:53 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Re: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Hello,
Am Mittwoch, 25. November 2020, 07:17:15 CET schrieb Simon Lees:
I believe that the events in the last year have shown
a weakness in at
least one part of the rules.
Forced re-election:
If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new
board, an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
I believe that this is a very worth while concept, however the current
phrasing has left enough ambiguity that in practice it was hard to
organise cleanly. My personal view is that the people who authored
this text expected that should this ever be needed that some form of
basic petition or even just +1's to a mailing list thread would be
done.
If I had to guess, I'd say they added the rule "because you need such a
rule", and never expected that there would be a need to actually trigger
that rule (which also means they didn't care about technical details).
In practice it was decided that this would be too hard
to verify and
had some privacy concerns and as such the election officials decided
to utilize our voting system which was a reasonable way to handle the
situation under the current wording.
I'd drop the "under the current wording" part - the way the voting was
done was reasonable, independent of the wording.
However it now leaves us in a
position where one or two people can call for such a vote that will
cripple the project for several weeks.
You are trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist ;-)
We were in this position since openSUSE exists. In all the years, we had
exactly one call for a non-confidence vote, and that was for good
reasons. Nobody ever abused this rule, and given the possible damage
someone could do to him-/herself, I expect that nobody will ever abuse
this rule to "troll" or "just for fun".
Besides that, I don't see how that would "cripple the project for
several weeks".
Most parts of the project will continue as usual.
The only affected area are board-related things like elections and the
board itsself. I'd hope that the board doesn't do "big" decisions during
a running non-confidence vote (unless they are really urgent), but
that's just a personal expectation and nothing our rules state.
And finally, since we now have a known-good way to handle a non-
confidence vote, it will (if we ever need it again) be handled much
faster.
This doesn't mean that your proposal is terribly bad, however I think it
is superfluous.
I don't believe this was the
intent of the original wording as such I am proposing an alternative,
this is still in draft form so I am happy to hear other peoples
amendments and suggestions.
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials
requesting a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent
or more openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be
held for the complete elected Board seats.
The 10 is a number that I felt is reasonable i'd be open to going
slightly up and down, its a bit of a balance if 20% of members are
interested getting 10 to contact the election officials should be
easy. At the same time it should be reasonably easy for election
officials to verify 10 members by checking the membership list and
sending an email to there registered email address asking for
confirmation they sent the original email.
Your main goal is to prevent abuse of the rule, right?
For that, I'd say that even 3 members would be enough, and 5 would be
more than enough.
Note that your proposal means 10 members need to half-publicly *) state
that they want a forced re-election, and this is harder than it sounds
for the privacy reasons discussed earlier.
*) In theory, the election officials could leak the list of people who
sent them a mail. Or one of the admins could check the mail log for
people who mailed the election officials recently and "guess" the
content.
To make it clear: This is not meant as distrust in the election
officials or the admins, but it's a case where I'm thinking about "what
could happen in worst case?" - and data that doesn't exist can't leak
;-)
There was also some questions around the 20% rather
then a 50%
majority, My view is to leave this as is, if 20% of people call for a
forced election it means there is quite some disagreement in the
community, however the current board can run in the election so a
different 50% of the community could still reinstate them.
IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong) some months ago your opinion was that in
case of a forced re-election, the current board members wouldn't be able
to run. I'm not sure if I mis-remember or if you changed your mind, but
let me explain why I don't like your view:
If the board kicks out one of the board members, this person is not
allowed to run in the forced re-election, even if that board action was
the reason for the non-confidence vote.
Therefore it would only be fair to apply the same rule if 20% of the
members kick out the whole board.
An alternative might be to change the rules so that "$person isn't
allowed to run" does not apply to forced re-elections.
(As a sidenote, and independent on the rules - if I'd be part of a
kicked-out board, I'm quite sure I wouldn't run again.)
Regards,
Christian Boltz
--
Ich bezweifle, dass jeder 1984 gelesen hat. Denn dann wüsten die
Kommentatoren, dass das Gros der Bürger gar nicht überwacht, sondern
einfach nur verdummt wurde. Privatfernsehen wurde übrigens in
Deutschland zum 1. Januar 1984 eingeführt. [Peter Brülls zu
http://blog.koehntopp.de/archives/3237-Kleine-Kinder-spielen-verstecken.html]
12 Dec
12 Dec
1:14 a.m.
New subject: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Hi Election officials.
Given there was reasonable support for this idea, regardless of other
changes we eventually make to the election rules I am requesting that
you add a vote on the following upcoming topic.
Should the Election Rules be Ammended Such that
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting
they run a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent
or more openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be
held for the complete elected Board seats.
Replace the existing
Forced re-election:
If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
Next week I will write a blog post explaining the why behind this change
as an addition to what I already posted to this list.
Cheers
Simon
On 11/25/20 4:47 PM, Simon Lees wrote:
Hi All,
Under "by a vote of the membership where 2/3 or more of the openSUSE
members participating in the vote approve it. " I would like to propose
an amendment to the Board Election rules (Note I rather then the board).
I believe that the events in the last year have shown a weakness in at
least one part of the rules. With the upcoming regular election I
believe this is as good a time as any to address this change.
The specific section I would like to modify is the following, I know
others have spoken about making changes to some larger sections at some
point but I believe this change is small and manageable in the current
timeframe so I'd like to keep the discussions in this thread around this
topic which is:
Forced re-election:
If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
I believe that this is a very worth while concept, however the current
phrasing has left enough ambiguity that in practice it was hard to
organise cleanly. My personal view is that the people who authored this
text expected that should this ever be needed that some form of basic
petition or even just +1's to a mailing list thread would be done.
In practice it was decided that this would be too hard to verify and had
some privacy concerns and as such the election officials decided to
utilize our voting system which was a reasonable way to handle the
situation under the current wording. However it now leaves us in a
position where one or two people can call for such a vote that will
cripple the project for several weeks. I don't believe this was the
intent of the original wording as such I am proposing an alternative,
this is still in draft form so I am happy to hear other peoples
amendments and suggestions.
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting
a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more
openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for
the complete elected Board seats.
The 10 is a number that I felt is reasonable i'd be open to going
slightly up and down, its a bit of a balance if 20% of members are
interested getting 10 to contact the election officials should be easy.
At the same time it should be reasonably easy for election officials to
verify 10 members by checking the membership list and sending an email
to there registered email address asking for confirmation they sent the
original email.
There was also some questions around the 20% rather then a 50% majority,
My view is to leave this as is, if 20% of people call for a forced
election it means there is quite some disagreement in the community,
however the current board can run in the election so a different 50% of
the community could still reinstate them.
My aim is to have a finalized version ready on the 8th of December (A
week before voting starts) i'd welcome anyone and everyone's feedback
anytime before then.
Cheers
--
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
11:44 p.m.
New subject: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 12/11/20 4:14 PM, Simon Lees wrote:
Given there was reasonable support for this idea,
regardless of other
changes we eventually make to the election rules I am requesting that
you add a vote on the following upcoming topic.
Should the Election Rules be Ammended Such that
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting
they run a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent
or more openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be
held for the complete elected Board seats.
To help offset ambiguity, I would actually reword part of that to "If
the petition results in 20 per cent or more ..."
But, I might try to make that instead of 20% of openSUSE Members, to
instead "if 20% of the petition votes".
Otherwise, it still leaves an ambiguity that might rear its ugly head
again someday.
Best for this recall/non-confidence section to eliminate any
possibilities of ambiguity, since it is really a section with Major
impact on the Community and Project.
--
-Gerry Makaro
openSUSE Member
Fraser-Bell on Github
13 Dec
13 Dec
9:54 a.m.
New subject: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 12/12/2020 à 23:44, Fraser_Bell a écrit :
But, I might try to make that instead of 20% of
openSUSE Members, to
instead "if 20% of the petition votes".
but then people have to vote yes or no, and abstention give a favor to
yes (if 10 people ask for petition and nobody else answer they have 100%)
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
16 Dec
16 Dec
12:43 p.m.
New subject: Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Sat 2020-12-12, Simon Lees wrote:
Hi Election officials.
Given there was reasonable support for this idea, regardless of other
changes we eventually make to the election rules I am requesting that
you add a vote on the following upcoming topic.
Should the Election Rules be Ammended Such that
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting
they run a petition of non confidence in the board. If 20 per cent
or more openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be
held for the complete elected Board seats.
Replace the existing
Forced re-election:
If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
That did not actually happen, did it?
Gerald
12 Dec
12 Dec
1:18 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Modifying the "Petition of no confidence
article".
Sounds good.
Your proposal:
"""
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting a petition of non
confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more openSUSE members require a new board, an
election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
"""
For my understanding: do you see your reformulation as equivalent to the following?
"""
Petition of No Confidence:
When the Board Elections are not running, 10 openSUSE members may contact the Election
Committee to request a petition of non confidence. The Election Committee then sees to
organize a community-wide vote on the petition. The petition is accepted if the vote
results in 20 per cent of Yes. If the petition is accepted, the Board is dismissed
immediately and the Election Committee organizes a new election to be held no longer than
< n weeks > after the vote.
"""
If you had in mind something different, which are the differences which would make you
prefer your version?
Best,
Adrien
3:08 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 1:19 PM Adrien Glauser <adrien.glauser(a)gmail.com> wrote:
My governance nose is also telling me that a rule for inaction of the
Election Committee should be added... Obliging someone to something
without a deadline is a widely misused "loophole".
> Best,
>
> Adrien
> _______________________________________________
> openSUSE Project mailing list -- project(a)lists.opensuse.org
> To unsubscribe, email project-leave(a)lists.opensuse.org
> List Netiquette: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_list_netiquette
> List Archives: https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org
Modifying the "Petition of no confidence
article".
Sounds good.
Your proposal:
"""
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting a petition of non
confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more openSUSE members require a new board, an
election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
"""
For my understanding: do you see your reformulation as equivalent to the following?
"""
Petition of No Confidence:
When the Board Elections are not running, 10 openSUSE members may contact the Election
Committee to request a petition of non confidence. The Election Committee then sees to
organize a community-wide vote on the petition. The petition is accepted if the vote
results in 20 per cent of Yes. If the petition is accepted, the Board is dismissed
immediately and the Election Committee organizes a new election to be held no longer than
< n weeks > after the vote.
"""
If you had in mind something different, which are the differences which would make you
prefer your version?
13 Dec
13 Dec
10:53 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 12/13/20 12:38 AM, Mark Stopka wrote:
On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 1:19 PM Adrien Glauser
<adrien.glauser(a)gmail.com> wrote:
My governance nose is also telling me that a rule for inaction of the
Election Committee should be added... Obliging someone to something
without a deadline is a widely misused "loophole".
This is probably also a decent idea, in practice in the past the board
has replaced or called for additional members if a process is taking the
election officials too long. The period of time when the standard yearly
election should run is specified although we haven't done a good job of
keeping it often due to reasons that are out of the election officials
control.
--
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
Modifying the "Petition of no confidence
article".
Sounds good.
Your proposal:
"""
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting a petition of non
confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more openSUSE members require a new board, an
election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
"""
For my understanding: do you see your reformulation as equivalent to the following?
"""
Petition of No Confidence:
When the Board Elections are not running, 10 openSUSE members may contact the Election
Committee to request a petition of non confidence. The Election Committee then sees to
organize a community-wide vote on the petition. The petition is accepted if the vote
results in 20 per cent of Yes. If the petition is accepted, the Board is dismissed
immediately and the Election Committee organizes a new election to be held no longer than
< n weeks > after the vote.
"""
If you had in mind something different, which are the differences which would make you
prefer your version?
10:49 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 12/12/20 10:48 PM, Adrien Glauser wrote:
What you wrote reflects what I had in mind, however the reason I prefer
my version is I intentionally wanted to keep the differences as small as
possible to make the functional changes as clear as possible otherwise I
would have also cleaned up the other sentences a bit better.
One of the main factors in deciding to take this approach is that the
board has given its in principle support to using its 2/3rds majority to
make non functional changes that clear up the wording so if the vote is
successful then i'd change the wording to something like your proposal
at the same time as going through the rest of the document to make it
clearer in order to keep uniformity etc.
--
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
Modifying the
"Petition of no confidence article".
Sounds good.
Your proposal:
"""
Forced re-election:
10 individual members may contact the election officials requesting a petition of non
confidence in the board. If 20 per cent or more openSUSE members require a new board, an
election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
"""
For my understanding: do you see your reformulation as equivalent to the following?
"""
Petition of No Confidence:
When the Board Elections are not running, 10 openSUSE members may contact the Election
Committee to request a petition of non confidence. The Election Committee then sees to
organize a community-wide vote on the petition. The petition is accepted if the vote
results in 20 per cent of Yes. If the petition is accepted, the Board is dismissed
immediately and the Election Committee organizes a new election to be held no longer than
< n weeks > after the vote.
"""
If you had in mind something different, which are the differences which would make you
prefer your version?
11:34 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Okay :)
14 Dec
14 Dec
11:27 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Sat 2020-12-12, Adrien Glauser wrote:
For my understanding: do you see your reformulation as
equivalent to
the following?
No, the status quo/Simon's and yours are substantially different.
"""
Petition of No Confidence:
When the Board Elections are not running
This is a good addition, which makes sense to avoid events run on
top of each other.
On the other hand, a board election will usually replace between
two and three board members, so is not a complete alternative.
If the petition is accepted, the Board is dismissed
immediately and
the Election Committee organizes a new election to be held no longer
than < n weeks > after the vote.
This is quite a change. The project would be without a board for
some two months then.
Who is going to carry on their responsibilities? The chair alone??
(This is all the more relevant if you are looking towards a foundation.)
Gerald
15 Dec
15 Dec
12:57 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 12/14/20 2:27 AM, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
On Sat 2020-12-12, Adrien Glauser wrote:
Yes, agreed, this would be disruptive and damaging. Board should step
down *after* the election, but LONG ENOUGH AFTER to hand over the reins
and help the newly elected Board get up to speed.
Of course, in such a situation, it is likely not all the outgoing Board
Members will be happy to remain after the non-confidence petition if the
petition is successful.
--
-Gerry Makaro
openSUSE Member
Fraser-Bell on Github
If the petition is accepted, the Board is
dismissed immediately and
the Election Committee organizes a new election to be held no longer
than < n weeks > after the vote.
This is quite a change. The project would be without a board for
some two months then.
Who is going to carry on their responsibilities? The chair alone??
(This is all the more relevant if you are looking towards a foundation.)
12:22 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Damaging instant dismissal
Fixed with 1 key
stroke:
~~~~~~~~~~~
Petition of No Confidence:
When the Board Elections are not running, 10 openSUSE members may contact the Election
Committee to request a petition of non confidence. The Election Committee then sees to
organize a community-wide vote on the petition. The petition is accepted if the vote
results in 20 per cent of Yes. If the petition is accepted, the Election Committee
organizes a new election to be held no longer than < n weeks > after the vote.
~~~~~~~~~~~
(I had provisioned this measure before the < n weekS > clause, thanks for tying this
loose end)
On the other hand, a board election will usually
replace between
two and three board members, so is not a complete alternative.
Why?
1:24 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 15/12/2020 à 12:22, Adrien Glauser a écrit :
f the vote results in 20 per cent of Yes.
20% of what?
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
3:30 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 3:28 PM Adrien Glauser <adrien.glauser(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If 20% of total members are required and not just vote participants,
we certainly need to do some cleaning among inactive members...
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20 of what
participants. I had in mind
those in the oS community with voting rights. You think that should be made more precise?
3:36 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
* Mark Stopka <mstopka(a)opensuse.org> [12-15-20 09:33]:
On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 3:28 PM Adrien Glauser
<adrien.glauser(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If 20% of total members are required and not just vote participants,
we certainly need to do some cleaning among inactive members...
and that has been "argued" here for quite some time with several
"partial"
solution proposed.
NOTE: this post may never reach the list or may with quite some delay as
it must be censored first if anyone ever bothers ...
--
(paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode
20 of what
participants. I had in mind
those in the oS community with voting rights. You think that should be made more precise?
3:36 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Sorry, to make this crystal clear, the draft I've sketched makes the following
presuppositions:
- vote passes just in case +20% of those who participate say Yay
- x can participante just in case x has voting rights
Le mardi 15 décembre 2020, 15:30:52 CET Mark Stopka a écrit :
On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 3:28 PM Adrien Glauser
<adrien.glauser(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If 20% of total members are required and not just vote participants,
we certainly need to do some cleaning among inactive members...
20 of what
participants. I had in mind
those in the oS community with voting rights. You think that should be made more precise?
_______________________________________________
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6:31 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Tue 2020-12-15, Adrien Glauser wrote:
Sorry, to make this crystal clear, the draft I've
sketched makes the following presuppositions:
- vote passes just in case +20% of those who participate say Yay
- x can participante just in case x has voting rights
In that case the draft is quite different from the current rules and
would be a substantial change:
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules#Forced_re-election:
"If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board,
an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats."
(This is now the second such case where you, intentionally or
inadvertently, put in such a change. If it's intentional, please be
very explicit about it. If it's not, I am happy to help catch those
cases, but am getting a bit worried that it's me, as someone who was
not familiar with those rules at all until a year ago.)
Gerald
16 Dec
16 Dec
12:15 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Gerald, let's get the context clear:
- Simon has presented a draft above;
- I've replied with a sketch of a more precise formulation, trying to dig out certain
assumptions and coming up with a concrete procedure, for the unique purpose of capturing
what Simon had in mind;
- Simon has commented on the sketch with
"What you wrote reflects what I had in mind, however the reason I prefer
my version is I intentionally wanted to keep the differences as small as
possible to make the functional changes as clear as possible otherwise I
would have also cleaned up the other sentences a bit better."
So the result is pretty clear: the assumptions and procedure were worth making explicit,
but that does not mean the job is done, of course (and here I acknowledge I misunderstood
the +20% Yays condition. It's all my bad)
So it's really dragging my sketch veeery far from its purpose to consider it as *my
official proposal*. It's. Not. Even. My. Idea.
However if you really want to help me fix the Rules, not just this one but all of them,
there is in your mailbox an email from me, with a complete reformulation of the entire
Rules along with 8 issues to discuss, patiently waiting to see light.
So let's work on the real deal and quit playing mouse-and-cat around a fragment
that's outliving its purposes.
Cheers, and looking forward to getting your feedback on the real deal,
Adrien
PS: Also if discussing the details of the Rules (I repeat for anyone to whom what
wouldn't be clear: the goal is to reformulate them in a way that makes them easily
applicable, which often means coupling each rule with an adequate implementation
procedure, with minimal "functional changes" in comparison to the Rules as
currently expressed) via email is not a rewarding experience, I'd be glad to find
other ways. Can have meetings, can have a special Rules Task Force, whichever you guys
prefer.
3:32 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 12/16/20 9:45 AM, Adrien Glauser wrote:
Gerald, let's get the context clear:
- Simon has presented a draft above;
- I've replied with a sketch of a more precise formulation, trying to dig out certain
assumptions and coming up with a concrete procedure, for the unique purpose of capturing
what Simon had in mind;
- Simon has commented on the sketch with
"What you wrote reflects what I had in mind, however the reason I prefer
my version is I intentionally wanted to keep the differences as small as
possible to make the functional changes as clear as possible otherwise I
would have also cleaned up the other sentences a bit better."
Because of the reasoning I gave I didn't spend alot of time looking at
your draft otherwise I would have spotted the same issue but I support
the concept.
So the result is pretty clear: the assumptions and
procedure were worth making explicit, but that does not mean the job is done, of course
(and here I acknowledge I misunderstood the +20% Yays condition. It's all my bad)
So it's really dragging my sketch veeery far from its purpose to consider it as *my
official proposal*. It's. Not. Even. My. Idea.
However if you really want to help me fix the Rules, not just this one but all of them,
there is in your mailbox an email from me, with a complete reformulation of the entire
Rules along with 8 issues to discuss, patiently waiting to see light.
So let's work on the real deal and quit playing mouse-and-cat around a fragment
that's outliving its purposes.
Cheers, and looking forward to getting your feedback on the real deal,
I imagine you might not get mine till next week, i'm running out of
spare time to look at this kind of detail this week.
Adrien
PS: Also if discussing the details of the Rules (I repeat for anyone to whom what
wouldn't be clear: the goal is to reformulate them in a way that makes them easily
applicable, which often means coupling each rule with an adequate implementation
procedure, with minimal "functional changes" in comparison to the Rules as
currently expressed) via email is not a rewarding experience, I'd be glad to find
other ways. Can have meetings, can have a special Rules Task Force, whichever you guys
prefer.
Yep we just need to make sure we are careful not to introduce any
unintentional consiquences or side effects such as the on Gerald pointed
out here. If we want to use it as a basis for a foundation it also still
has to be something lawyers would be happy with.
Cheers
--
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
2:52 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 12/16/20 1:00 AM, Mark Stopka wrote:
On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 3:28 PM Adrien Glauser
<adrien.glauser(a)gmail.com> wrote:
If 20% of total members are required and not just vote participants,
we certainly need to do some cleaning among inactive members...
As the rule currently stands its 20% of total members, and yes this is
the one reason why cleaning up inactive members is important. My
proposal doesn't change that part in anyway it just clarifies how this
process is triggered as getting 20% of members to sign a petition or +1
in an email thread is impractical if not impossible to verify.
As for the 20% value openSUSE's rules were largely taken from an
existing organisations maybe Gnomes at the time so my guess without
really checking is that this figure just came from there. I think the
important thing is it reflects that a significant percentage of the
membership is unhappy with the board.
--
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
20 of what
participants. I had in mind
those in the oS community with voting rights. You think that should be made more precise?
15 Dec
15 Dec
3:36 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Dne úterý 15. prosince 2020 15:28:39 CET, Adrien Glauser napsal(a):
Total members? This is serious act and shouldn't be driven "just" by small
active (loud) group.
--
Vojtěch Zeisek
https://trapa.cz/
Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu
Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux
https://www.opensuse.org/
20 of what
participants.
3:40 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 3:36 PM Vojtěch Zeisek
<vojtech.zeisek(a)opensuse.org> wrote:
Dne úterý 15. prosince 2020 15:28:39 CET, Adrien Glauser napsal(a):
Total members? This is serious act and shouldn't be driven "just" by small
active (loud) group.
It is also serious enough so that there should be a high participation
rate and if there is not, there certainly is "something wrong" with
the project, I would support an increase of Yay threshold, but not let
large inactive (quiet) groups block something as serious.
>
> --
> Vojtěch Zeisek
> https://trapa.cz/
>
> Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu
> Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux
> https://www.opensuse.org/
> _______________________________________________
> openSUSE Project mailing list -- project(a)lists.opensuse.org
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20 of
what
participants.
3:51 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Dne úterý 15. prosince 2020 15:40:42 CET jste napsal(a):
On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 3:36 PM Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
At least X% of total members must vote and at least Y% of the voters must
agree? Where X can be something like 50? And Y something like 20-50? See that
50% out of 50% is 25% of the total. Is this enough to replace Board?
--
Vojtěch Zeisek
https://trapa.cz/
Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu
Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux
https://www.opensuse.org/
Dne úterý 15. prosince 2020 15:28:39 CET, Adrien
Glauser napsal(a):
Total members? This is serious act and shouldn't be driven "just"
by small active (loud) group.
It is also serious enough so that there should be a high participation
rate and if there is not, there certainly is "something wrong" with
the project, I would support an increase of Yay threshold, but not let
large inactive (quiet) groups block something as serious. 20 of
what
participants.
4:04 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
all voters are members, turnout 50%, accepted at 25%
Honestly I use 20% has a placeholder. It's very arbitrary and I don't feel
comfortable with very arbitrary stuff. I can possibly help with finding simple and clear
rules, but I have 0 legitimacy for pulling numbers out of my hat.
Also: your turnout and acceptance numbers could be swapped.
3:48 p.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
Le 15/12/2020 à 15:28, Adrien Glauser a écrit :
for sure...
20% was chosen because taking account of the low number of votes among
membership
last time the "vote" was only a poll, with only one answer (mostly)
even if this is not the real vote but only a call for vote, we can't let
it be too easy
jdd
--
http://dodin.org
20 of what
participants. I had in mind those in the oS community with voting rights. You think
that should be made more precise?
16 Dec
16 Dec
2:32 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On 12/15/20 9:52 PM, Adrien Glauser wrote:
Board members have a 2 year term and there are 5 elected members, so
generally we alternate between electing 2 members and electing 3,
although if a board member steps down before the end of there term it
could be 4 or more etc. If someone steps down from the board in October
its likely the board will just function with one less member until the
next election.
--
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
Damaging
instant dismissal
Fixed with 1 key stroke:
~~~~~~~~~~~
Petition of No Confidence:
When the Board Elections are not running, 10 openSUSE members may contact the Election
Committee to request a petition of non confidence. The Election Committee then sees to
organize a community-wide vote on the petition. The petition is accepted if the vote
results in 20 per cent of Yes. If the petition is accepted, the Election Committee
organizes a new election to be held no longer than < n weeks > after the vote.
~~~~~~~~~~~
(I had provisioned this measure before the < n weekS > clause, thanks for tying
this loose end)
On the other hand, a board election will usually
replace between
two and three board members, so is not a complete alternative.
Why?
10:54 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
alternating between electing 2 to 3 members yearly,
and Board would continue working even with one or two empty seats.
I see. That's something to discuss in individual emails. The idea of the "when an
election is not running" is to apply a "time lock", to be specified by the
Election Committee, securing a temporal context around certain important steps, such as
"campaign official kicks off, platforms are out, candidates meetup, votes". The
value of this is to prevent Petitions of No Confidence in the middle of that, because we
could end up with a very messy situation (i.e. inconsistent state). This idea of this is
very flexible in that the time lock can be made to protect just the voting process, or
more.
I won't be checking up on this topic again so please for further discussion let's
head to our email clients.
2:33 a.m.
New subject: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Amending the Board Election rules.
On Tue 2020-12-15, Adrien Glauser wrote:
Are you wondering about the first half sentence ("usually replace
between two and three board members") or the second?
Gerald
[re-election
of all selected seats]
On the other hand, a board election will usually replace between
two and three board members, so is not a complete alternative.
Why?
37
days inactive
58
days old
78 comments
21 participants
participants (21)
-
Adrien Glauser -
Ariez Vachha -
Axel Braun -
Christian Boltz -
Fraser_Bell -
Gerald Pfeifer -
jdd＠dodin.org -
Knurpht-openSUSE -
Marina Latini -
Mark Stopka -
Martin Schröder -
Maurizio Galli -
Patrick Shanahan -
Per Jessen -
Richard Brown -
Simon Lees -
Stasiek Michalski -
Vincent Untz -
Vinzenz Vietzke -
Vinzenz Vietzke -
Vojtěch Zeisek