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 list 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 proposed by the sub-committee? Cheers, Mark.