On 01/31/2012 11:40 AM, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
On Friday, January 27, 2012 08:29:30 Jim Henderson wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:38:57 +0100, Marco Michna wrote:
Aloha,
Respectfully, I disagree. Fortunately, we're not required to agree on all things. That would be awfully boring.
[bunch of ranting, raving, swearing, and ad-hominem attacks]
Nice that you put it that way ... shows how much respect you have!
Well, when someone writes to me things like:
You don't have to defend yourself. Marco acts like a 6 year old and should be treated as such - ignore. It's not a character flaw to tune out at that point. Actually I respect you greatly for responding the way you did to him, I would've put his mail on ignore (as I bet many others already have done). There's no excuse for the rudeness he displayed.
More on topic.
Yes, becoming openSUSE Member is something you got because you contributed. That contribution doesn't go away, hence you shouldn't be kicked out. Yet the problem is real - some don't care about participating as member. That is, they don't vote, which is the major thing a member does. There is nothing else a member can do that a non-member can not.
So, I propose that those who don't care about the vote for 2 years become non- voting members. I think it respects their wishes. Of course they keep their mail address (the only perk of being member) and nothing else changes. They just don't count in the statistic and don't vote. If they want to change their status they can ask the membership committee to re-instate them as voting members.
This makes clear what members are interested in the governance of openSUSE. Others are members just as much and through contributions they influence openSUSE on a technical level. But the voting procedure is about governance - things like the conference and travel money and sponsorship. I get it completely if you don't care about that but you should still be able to be member. But that membership should count as part of those who vote. If and when we transition to a Foundation we need to have this procedure in any case - you can't make certain decisions lawfully if you have only 30% of your members vote... So having 'non-voting' members solves that problem.
And if you don't vote out of protest, I'm sure we can add a "I don't like anything" as option to votes to solve that part. At least then we know who doesn't vote for a reason (protest) or because he/she doesn't care and it'll be actually meaningful.
All in all I think this way we can have our cake and eat it too: we know who regularly votes; it's clear who doesn't care or protests; our numbers are actually meaningful; yet we don't take anything from anyone (membership depends on contributions, yet if you don't want to be bothered by the voting stuff that's fine).
Acceptable compromise?
I think we are focusing too much on the voting process here. While I used voting as an example in my original post, the bottom line is that it should be about contributions to the project. Members cannot and should not be forced to vote! Those who do not vote out of protest loose their voice if we have a large block of non active members. Non voters will just get shoved into the "non active" bucket. Thus, especially those that contribute but do not vote out of protest gain a voice that they do not have today. If we have only current project contributors as members we have to make the assumption that they are interested in the project as a whole and it's governance. Therefore, if voting participation is low, this will speak about the governance of project and some soul searching would be in order. This expression of choice is currently not possible. But enough about the voting, again, I think the voting topic has become too much of a focus in the discussion. I would refrain from creating a "graded" membership model as I think it takes away from the "flair" of being a member. Everyone that is a member had to show that they contributed to the project in some, more or less regular fashion, and in a way that is meaningful to the project. The recognition of this contribution is the "member badge" (for lack of a better term). This also implies that those who are members cared enough about the status of being a member, for whatever personal reasons, that they followed the "member application process". There is no intention not to recognize those who contributed to the project but no longer do. Everyone who stopped contributing will have their own reasons. This recognition can be addressed via a web page or other means. But does not have to include being a member forever more. If one is a current member the contributions should also be current, where current based on previous discussions appears to lie around a 2 year time frame. For now those who contribute could check some check-boxes on a web page to indicate what areas they contribute to. Hopefully over time we can make some progress in "contribution tracking" (this is not intended to check up on anybody) as suggested earlier in the thread. At that point the web page checking could go away and "renewal" is fully automated. If everyone that ever contributed to the project and no longer does, is retained as a member it takes away from the "status" of those that currently do contribute to the project and it robs those that contribute but voice their opinion by not voting of their voice. The member list should reflect those that currently contribute and care sufficiently enough to have gone through the membership process. Once a member all one has to do is keep contributing and check a couple of boxes on a web page every once in a while, as a sign of live, so to speak. Once we can figure out the "sign of live" automatically the web page checking goes away. Seems rather simple to me, but maybe I am over simplifying things. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX Tech Lead rjschwei@suse.com rschweik@ca.ibm.com 781-464-8147 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org