Open Stack

On Oct 8, 2013, at 9:23 AM, Monty Taylor <mordred at inaugust.com>
 wrote:

> 
> 
> On 10/08/2013 10:04 AM, Jim Jagielski wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Monty Taylor <mordred at inaugust.com
>> <mailto:mordred at inaugust.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>    What matters is that Cummulative Voting is designed EXPLICITLY to
>>    support and bolster the idea that people with more money get more voice.
>>    That's its benefit, and it does its job very well.
>> 
>>    We, on the other hand, would not like to express that worldview or
>>    organizational design in our community.
>> 
>> 
>> I find that statement troubling... just the idea that a basic tenet of
>> governance is something that people would not "like" the *community* to
>> know is somehow uncomfortable to me. What happened to the idea of open
>> and transparent governance?
> 
> What? I'm talking EXACTLY about open and transparent governance.
> 
> Let me be slightly more clear in my wording.
> 
> I, as a member of the community, do not want the governance of my
> community to be beholden to the ability to purchase governance seats. I
> do not value that, and I do not think that most of the people in our
> community value that.
> 
> With that in mind, I would like for our structure to reflect that at
> every level possible.
> 
> Cummulatiave voting, as I've said time and again, is designed explicitly
> to support a structural design which is completely and fundamentally
> opposite from the values on which we have built OpenStack.
> 
> As such, it is a bug, and it should be fixed.

Just to pile on. The mere appearance or possibility of corruption in the system erodes trust. The community can't be healthy without that fundamental trust. We have an opportunity to improve the situation and the sooner we do it the better, IMHO. I had hoped we had a change lined up that would move us in the right direction in the next election cycle. Given that is not the case, I think we should put a change up for vote sooner rather than later. We have systems that are proven to be more in line with the values of most of the community. I actually like Monty's suggestion of Condorcet because it also lines up with the other voting system we already have in place. Either that, STV or even one vote per candidate would move closer to the values this community has expressed.

> 
>>    We are, as with many things,
>>    trying to do something new, not just in our software, but in the way we
>>    run things.
>> 
>> 
>> It's not all that new or unique and, imo, it would benefit OpenStack to
>> learn from others, or at least listen to those who have done stuff like
>> this before. Otherwise, it's very easy to justify all decisions, whether
>> good or bad, based on "no one has ever tried this before".
> 
> We should absolutely learn from people before us. There are, however, a
> few things where we are MASSIVELY different than our esteemed
> predecessors. Notably, most projects that start as a multi-company
> endeavor with no originating grass-roots community do not tend to a) be
> successful at all (hi vendor consortium) or b) grow a community. We have
> managed to do both. Additionally, our adherance to individual leaderless
> consensus-based open governance, while not new per-se, is a bit new on
> this scale and with this level of corporate involvement.
> 
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