-----Original Message----- From: Mark McLoughlin [mailto:markmc@redhat.com] Sent: 17 November 2012 17:27 To: Alan Clark Cc: foundation@lists.openstack.org Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Board discussing how to improve the Individual Director election process, community input wanted
On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 06:17 -0700, Alan Clark wrote:
Informal conversations after the Summit led the Board, as a first step, to establish a sub-committee composed of primarily Individual Members.
AFAICT, this sub-committee was composed of Tristan Goode, Tim Bell, Rob Hirschfeld, Hui Cheng, Toby Ford and Troy Toman.
Concerns have been expressed about the election process since August and our response has been to:
* have the board appoint a sub-committee consisting of directors who were elected using the current election process
* not make the existence of that sub-committee publicly known
* not invite any of those community members who worked to make constructive suggestions about the issue on this list in the past
* publish the proposals mere days before they were to be adopted
I'm personally not into conspiracy theories and always assume good faith, but is it not obvious to everyone how bad this looks?
It would have been quite straightforward to look over these archives:
http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation/2012-October/thread.html
then ask those making constructive contributions whether they want to participate in the sub-committee, publish the etherpad from the very start and encourage the sub-committee to involve the mailing list in the discussion at all stages.
An etherpad detailing all of the potential options explored and discussed is at https://etherpad.openstack.org/Board-2012-VotingProposals.
Regardless of the above, thanks and kudos to those who worked on this. It looks like you worked hard to include all proposals made on the mailing
and weight them carefully.
Firstly, for the August 2012 election, four questions were produced from mailing list input and put to each election candidate, some of whom responded and some did not. It is the Board's recommendation that we develop this into a compulsory procedure where a nominated candidate is required to make a clear statement of the candidate's contribution to OpenStack.
Very positive but IMHO is, at first glance, orthogonal to the concerns about voter behaviour.
In the previous election, only Yujie Du and Rob Hirschfeld were elected without answering those questions (although Rob did blog about his candidacy).
Perhaps the concern we're trying to address is that if a candidate is elected without making it clear what they're standing for, it becomes hard for everyone to understand post-election why they were elected?
Secondly, the Board would like to more clearly inform the electorate on the reasons for individual members of the Board and explain their role, the importance of diversity on the Board, be that international, cultural, technological, gender or otherwise, the role of the Individual members for who and or what they represent, and provide guidance for members to use these criteria to assess their voting choice.
Thirdly, the Board asks that all organisations act honourably, be respectful and demonstrate responsibility and guide their staff to vote according to the best interests of the Community, and not their organisation. OpenStack's life blood is the Community.
Great. Let's make sure to have an open discussion about both sets of guidelines in advance of the election.
...
Fourthly, the Board is exploring options not requiring by-law changes and that fall within the current cumulative voting structure which will help to create a balanced representation of candidates from affiliated organisations, independents and minorities.
This is confusing. The board is exploring options other than those
Mark, The proposals for actions to be taken for the 2013 individual elections were prepared by Tristan, Hui and myself. We are individual board members but do not have any affiliation with companies who have platinum or gold member seats (which is where the concern has been expressed). This is as Johnathan communicated on November 2nd (http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/foundation/2012-November/001237.html) - "Discussed options for updates to the election process. Tim Bell, Hui Cheng and Tristan Goode are pulling together some recommendations that they will be sharing with the mailing list for feedback before the election period opens with nominations on November 26." Given that the board meeting to propose the sub-committee was only agreed on Nov 2nd, we were pleased to get the letter published on the 13th for the board meeting on the 16th. The time zone differences between Europe and Australia didn't make it easy to do it faster. Rob, Toby and Troy were also involved in the brainstorming prior to that to cover possibilities for both (as shown in the etherpad at https://etherpad.openstack.org/Board-2012-VotingProposals). Many of these proposals were extracted from ideas on the mailing list. The 4 possibilities proposed for the 2013 elections were those where the bylaws permitted us to change within the timescales available. The other options can be debated during 2013 and proposals can then be prepared to be voted on according to the bylaws. Tim list proposed
by the sub-committee?
Cheers, Mark.
_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing list Foundation@lists.openstack.org http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation