On Mon, 11 Nov 2019 14:04:04 +1030, Simon Lees wrote:
As many people didn't vote as voted no.
A similar number of people voted in this vote as previous board elections so it would be reasonable to presume that a significant percentage of the people that didn't vote either don't like voting or are inactive.
If it were a board election, I'd be inclined to agree. I don't know that it's reasonable to equate votes about two completely different topics in that way.
But instead, nobody was interested in listening to those of us making that point, so more than a couple of us simply DID NOT VOTE because our concerns were not addressed.
Not voting is a perfectly valid choice.
Except that now we're being told that a non-vote is the same as a no- vote, and since there was no way to vote 'present', there's no way to gauge what the lack of interest was vs. the number of people who would have voted had they been offered a viable option on the ballot. So basically, the non-voters who cared enough to vote but weren't given a viable option had no voice in this vote.
And now we're being told that our vote wouldn't have mattered - which is precisely the point.
I asked questions *repeatedly* and explained why the information provided (even after the wiki update) was insufficent for me to be able to decide on a yes/no vote here, because the name we would change to *matters* to me for making up my opinion.
If the proposed name was, I don't know, "GoatSe Linux", I'd vote emphatically NO, because that would be a stupid and offensive name.
If the proposed name was "Chameleon Linux" - I probably would have voted "yes".
But nobody cared enough to address that concern. So I didn't vote.
That is perfectly fair, I did mention somewhere on a list at some point that it would probably be advantagious for those keen on changing the name to put together a possible short list of possible options that didn't likely have domain / trademark issues as people may be more likely to support a name change if they saw something they liked. But no one took the initiative to do that. Personally I didn't because personally i'm in favor of keeping the current name if possible.
One of the points of holding a leadership position is (in my view) is to make sure things are handled properly - separating oneself and one's own views from ensuring the process is handled correctly and equitably to all is something that I would consider an important characteristic of someone in a leadership position. There's an issue of fundamental fairness, along with holding an official position of impartiality in the decision-making process when a vote takes place. Respectfully, I don't think it's reasonable to abrogate one's responsibility as a community leader just because of a personally-held opinion about how a vote should go.
Either way the result we have is that most people want to stick with openSUSE regardless of the alternatives that may have been proposed so now we can stop thinking about changing the name and move to trying our best to come up with a solution for the foundation that means it has access to the name as needed.
Like I said - those of us who didn't have enough information don't get a voice. Had I had sufficient information to make an informed vote, I would have. I'm fine with not changing the name. I'm just really disappointed in the process here, because I feel my vote didn't count because I wasn't provided an opportunity to formally express that opinion in the vote itself. I'm not saying that you personally should have put together a list of prospective names. I'm saying the vote shouldn't even have been held until options had been discussed and put forward as options. Perhaps also what I'm saying is that until those concerns that were raised were addressed, it's incumbent on the community leadership to do what they can to ensure that everyone's voice is heard (not just the voices the leadership personally agrees with) when issues are raised. That plainly didn't happen here, and that's the source of my disappointment in the process. I hope we can learn from this and not make these mistakes in the future. It's extremely frustrating to repeatedly make a point and to have zero feedback on it. I answered a question on the Facebook Page that was asked about this - representing the project (rather than myself), I answered with the answer that was discussed on the list - even though I didn't agree with the answer itself. I did understand the point of this vote; I just didn't agree with how it was handled because it disenfranchised more than a few of us who felt that without information about what we might change our name to, there wasn't enough information to make an informed decision. Personally, I'm not going to cast a vote if I feel I don't have enough information to make an informed vote. An uninformed vote is not of any use to anyone - and without the information I've stated I needed, I *couldn't* make an informed vote. But when I asked, all I got were crickets. That needs to be addressed, and IMHO, the board and the election committee are the two groups whom need to address issues like this. If they can't get an answer from the advocates of one side of the issue to address those questions, then the question really comes back to why we're even having a vote in the first place. If the "change" proponents couldn't answer the question "to what?" - then why vote at all? I'll stop beating this dead horse now. Time to move on, and I don't have time (or the will, honestly) to keep hashing over it. It's water over the bridge now. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org