[OSGeo-Conf] [Board] Amended MOTION (items 1-5): Conference Committee - Updating Membership Policies and Process

[Even Rouault]

Le jeudi 29 septembre 2016 19:45:29, Eli Adam a écrit :
> I thought that I had 15 more minutes to comment,
> http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
> 
> This amendment has only gotten participation of 7/16 committee members
> which demonstrates exactly why to not pass it.
> 
> No one (Maria included) has responded to my real world OSGeo project
> examples (including the conference committee selecting the FOSS4G bid)
> of less than 50% participation.
> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/2016-September/003998.html
> . Also, no one has commented on the apparent unpopularity of calling to
> remove committee members but the mathematical need for that to keep the
> committee functional with a 50% quorum requirement.
> 
> 3 of the 7 who participated, expressed favor for a 25% or lower quorum.
> 
> Maria, to keep the committee functional, will you bring a proposal to
> remove the 9/16 committee members who didn't vote?
> 
> If I were to vote on this, I would vote -1.  Right now it is obvious
> to me that the committee will become defunct with a 50% quorum
> requirement.  I have provided numerous counterexamples from our OSGeo
> Projects and this committee itself.  No one has addressed those
> examples or proposed solutions to how to keep the committee
> functional.

As just an observer of this list, I should probably refrain from jumping into 
this discussion, but anyway here are my 2 cents.

Quorum requirements just don't work with volunteer communities like the OSGeo 
ones.
As Daniel, Eli and perhaps others already pointed, many OSGeo committees and 
projects use :
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Committee_Guidelines
or variations of that.
And those were the ones that probably applied to the conference committee by 
default before the last votes.

They perhaps don't look super democratic (no quorum, just two +1 - and from 
experience it is sometimes difficult to get the two +1 ! -, veto, minimalist 
voting period, etc.), but that have proved to work during the last 10 years. 
Changing voting rules is a tricky business.

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