Open Stack

Thanks for the feedback. There are a lot of good suggestions and questions here. While we have run elections within OpenStack before, this is different because it's an election of corporate directors for the Foundation. We have to follow a little bit of a different process for nomination, member notice and the election itself to make sure we're meeting the requirements of our bylaws and Delaware law. As Mark McLoughlin said, this is a bootstrap phase we're in before the Board is fully established in a few weeks. We're working as hard as we can to keep this process moving so the Foundation can become operational in the next few months. In order to even run this election, we have to have some individuals in place doing the legal legwork, and during this phase, I'm acting as Secretary. We have been trying to be open, posting nominations to the page as they come in, sending out emails and tweets to encourage people to nominate, and notifying nominees as they are nominated. If anyone wants to make their nomination public in addition to notifying the secretary they're welcome to do so, and if anyone feels that their nominations have been missed or manipulated, please speak up so we can correct it. 

As a reminder, the Board of Directors is ultimately legally responsible for the Foundation as a corporate entity. The board is made up of three types of Member Directors: 1/3 Platinum Members, 1/3 Gold Members and 1/3 Individual Members. The Individual Member Director seats provide an opportunity for a broad set of people to be involved in the Board to ensure the community as a whole is well served and represented. To encourage broad representation, no more than two members of the Board may be affiliated with the same company, which means if the election results in too many employees from a single company, the candidate receiving the next highest votes would assume the seat. 

The statement Dan copied over is a pretty good summary of the Board activities (oversight of the Foundation and its budget, strategy and goals according to the mission and responsibilities outlined here http://wiki.openstack.org/Governance/Foundation/Mission). In terms of what that means for individual Board members, the directors need to attend regular quarterly Board meetings and any special meetings that come up. The meetings will be held in a way that allows for remote participation. They should be willing to gather input and feedback from community members as it relates to Board decisions. It is a true corporate board, though, so there are also fiduciary duties the Board members are responsible for and an expanded code of conduct (http://www.openstack.org/legal/code-of-conduct/) that directors should adhere to.

We definitely want to have some means for nominees to provide details on what they would bring to the Board, and can easily add a section or statement to their current bios. We are just starting by contacting each nominee to get their basic info up as quickly as possible, so the community knows who has been nominated so far. We're open to ideas, especially as we enter the election phase, for each candidate on the ballot to better articulate their platforms and experience.

Jonathan
210-317-2438

On Jul 26, 2012, at 12:04 PM, Robbie Williamson wrote:

> On 07/26/2012 11:49 AM, Robbie Williamson wrote:
>> Also, it
>> might make sense to confirm with nominees *before* placing them on the
>> list...so at least they know what they are getting into ;).
> Nevermind...I was just too impatient. :/
> 
> -- 
> Robbie Williamson <robbie at ubuntu.com>
> robbiew[irc.freenode.net]
> 
> "Don't make me angry...you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
> -Bruce Banner
> 
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