Open Stack

On Mar 9, 2012, at 4:50 PM, Boris Renski Jr. wrote:
> The one thing I would do away with is the “elected board members” in favor of more associate member seats. This almost feels like a way to compensate the technology side for giving the marketing side leverage over the former. If we feel that this is necessary, it is a symptom of presence of technology-commercial coupling and we need to fix something else. All technical members should be elected based on merit. All board members – appointed based on monetary/evangelism contribution. Decoupling between technology direction and purchasing power should be rock solid.

Thanks for the thoughts, Boris. One point I'd make: the Individual Member seats are not just about compensating the technology side. It gives an opportunity for the entire community to elect representatives. These could be some of the "luminaries" Josh spoke of or others unaffiliated with any corporate member. Individual Membership is not limited solely to developers who are contributing code, but would include users, deployers, translators, marketers and people with all sorts of involvement in the community. Individual Membership is free and a great place for participants academic institutions, non-profits, etc. to participate with no price tag.

Jonathan.