[OpenStack Foundation] board chair == two votes -was- Re: Technical Committee: new draft

Christopher B Ferris chrisfer at us.ibm.com
Thu Jul 12 14:58:42 UTC 2012



Kurt,

While I fully agree with your description of the goals and the sad state of
affairs where we have dueling corporate interests that have split the
community, if the issues really are just about two equally good ideas, then
you don't need a chair making the decision, what you need then is an
effective chair who understands how to tease consensus out of a group, say
by asking thinks like "who cannot live with option X", etc

My $0.02 USD

Sent from my iPad

On Jul 11, 2012, at 5:29 PM, Kurt.Garloff at telekom.de wrote:

> Hi Doug,
>
> no reasonable committee of any kind should be happy to pass votes with
50% plus a tie-breaking  double-count ...
> I have been working in OSS projects for most of my life and reaching
consensus or near-consensus was the norm, not the exception in any project
that I participated in.
>
> That should be the goal for any decision-body as well, and if we end up
being in a situation where we often have near 50% decisions, we're in
serious trouble. I would dare to say that this would rather be an
indication that most of our discussions are driven by conflicting corporate
interests rather than enthusiasts who try to work out the best solution to
a problem. We're in deep trouble if this happens and the fact we may have
tie-breaking rules that we don't like is one of our smallest problems
then ...
>
> That said, there might be situations where we have two options and one is
as good as the other ... if for some reason people can't agree, it is
sometimes the worst option to not take a decision, so having some
tie-breaking capability then is useful. It should be used in exceptional
cases only -- if we are afraid that it might be abused, we might want to
restrict it. Maybe create a rule that the tie-breaking double vote can't be
used when a topic is brought up for decision first -- only when we could
not come to a decision and need to reconvene a second time to discuss and
take a decision on the same topic, then it may be used.
>
> Just my 0.02EUR.
>
> Best,
> --
> Kurt
>
> Kurt Garloff | VP Engineering DBU Cloud Services | Products & Innovation
| Deutsche Telekom AG | http://www.telekom.com/
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6312)
>
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>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Doug Davis [mailto:dug at us.ibm.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 10:48 PM
> > To: Lloyd Dewolf
> > Cc: foundation at lists.openstack.org
> > Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] board chair == two votes
> > -was- Re: Technical Committee: new draft
> >
> > Yes, its the tie situation that I'm preferring to.  To me
> > either the vote reaches the threshold or it doesn't.  50%
> > isn't the threshold so it fails.
> >
> > There's also the interesting case where multiple people from
> > the same company get to vote in the same ballot - I think its
> > because the same company can have  both platinum (or gold -
> > can't remember which right now) as well as individual
> > members, and that's another sore point for me but I'll leave
> > that for another day.  :-)  But its those kinds of rules that
> > make things seem a lot more complicated than they need to be.
> >  Once company, one vote is much easier.
> >
> > thanks
> > -Doug
> > ________________________________________________________
> > STSM |  Standards Architect  |  IBM Software Group
> > (919) 254-6905  |  IBM 444-6905  |  dug at us.ibm.com The more
> > I'm around some people, the more I like my dog.
> >
> >
> >
> > Lloyd Dewolf <lloydostack at gmail.com>
> > 07/05/2012 04:35 PM
> >
> > To
> > Doug Davis/Raleigh/IBM at IBMUS
> > cc
> > foundation at lists.openstack.org
> > Subject
> > board chair == two votes -was- Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Technical
> > Committee: new draft
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:26 PM, Doug Davis <dug at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > For example, I mentioned that I didn't like PTLs having
> > more power than
> > > anyone else, I think the same goes for the board chair.  In
> > the current
> > > foundation by-laws it talks about the chair having more
> > than one vote.
> >
> > Would you point to a specific section(s) where this comes into play?
> >
> > My understanding is the two vote only comes up in a scenario that
> > requires a tie break, often in a scenario when the chair won't have
> > voted in creating the tie, and the fact that it is two votes is just
> > how Delaware works.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --
> > @lloyddewolf
> > http://www.pistoncloud.com/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Foundation at lists.openstack.org
> > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
> >
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