Re: [opensuse-project] Proposal for Decision Making Process for the formation of our Foundation

On 07/06/2019 06:45, Richard Brown wrote:

On Thu, 6 Jun 2019 at 20:39, Sébastien 'sogal' Poher wrote:

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- The result of any vote that receives less than 2/3s of the current membership will not be considered binding, but will be considered indicative. - The openSUSE Board will then be expected to interpret that indicative result and conduct its own vote on the topic, requiring a 2/3s majority for any decision.

I am not comfortable with the idea that the Board's vote may overcome the comminuty vote. I would rather say that if less than 2/3 of the current membership use their right of speech on a vote, then it's up to the Board to wheter vote of the topic (following the rules you mention above) or explain better the topic and reconduct the vote.

When I wrote "The openSUSE Board will then be expected to interpret that indicative result and conduct it's own vote" the expectation is that the Board should be using their (long established) power to rewrite the Project's rules after a 2/3 vote in the Board, but doing so in a way which reflects their view on the result

For example

Imagine a theoretical situation where only 50% of the Membership vote on a proposal whether the Foundation should require that every Member must vote in every election in order to remain a member. But of the 50% who vote, 80% of the voters reject the idea. That is a clearly 'indicative result' which is easy for the Board to consider. With the rule, as it is written above, the expectation is that the Board would use their power to quickly resolve the issue. Any other situation could potentially deadlock the effort to make a Foundation - and this is a process that is going to take months at the best of times, any deadlock could easily kick this effort into taking YEARS.

Also, any other proposal besides my own would require granting either the Membership or the Board new powers which they do not have under our current rules. Right now, we say that any rules changes in the Project need either a 2/3rd Membership vote, OR a 2/3rd Board vote. My proposal add a layer of structure to this for the purposes of forming the Foundation to give MORE engagement with the community than the current rules, which do not state when the Membership should be consulted or when the Board should exercise their power.

Sure, I accept in my proposal there are theoretical situations where under 2/3rd of the Membership vote and the indicative result from the Membership vote would be less clear - imagine a 50/50 split for example. "The Brexit-like Scenario"

In such a case, the chances of the Project getting a more clear outcome after a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th round of voting, is unlikely..but we have a Board precisely to help with tie-breakers like that. That's why the rules were written to give the Board the power to change the rules.

Of course like with any Board decision, the Board would need to explain whatever they decided. And if the Project doesn't like it - it only takes 20% of the Membership to force the entire Board to be re-elected. AND if you consider the other proposed rule where the final form of the Foundation will be put to another Member vote where the Board will NOT have the ability to tie-break, you should see how my proposals should ensure that there is no way we can end up with a Foundation that doesn't meet our Memberships satisfaction.

This is why I think my above proposed rule is the best way forward - removing this proposed rule from my list will risk dramatically slowing down any decision we need to make around any aspect of the Foundation.. and we have plenty of safeguards in the Project and my other proposed rules to make sure the Board cant 'go rogue' and steer things in an unsatisfactory direction.

Having spoken to Richard who is off to bed then wisely is off away for the weekend, he has slightly misinterpreted the existing rules and missed the participating in "2/3 or more of the openSUSE members participating in the vote approve it." as such is happy to drop the requiring 2/3rds of members being required to vote and is happy with my amendments which should clean up most of the concerns in this thread hopefully so lets proceed from there. 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 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org