[Qgis-psc] Please review - draft email calling for QGIS Community Voting Member Nominations.

Tue May 3 15:03:11 PDT 2016

Hi All

Further to our (Andreas and myself) discussion last night about preparations for the AGM (Annual General Meeting), I have made a simple form[2] for nominating QGIS Community Voting members as per our charter [2]. Any proposed edits / comments before we send this out to the mailing lists? I will send out the following mail to the developer, documentation and translation mailing lists with an invitation to nominate. Anita could you also ask the OSGEO to put forward their nominated person for the OSGEO voting member? I’d like to send this out tomorrow if possible so that we have 1 week to nominate voting members.  Also please note the parts below about electing board members and chair. Based on our discussions last night, Andreas and I were of the opinion that it will be more fair and democratic that all the board members and the chair are elected by the newly appointed voting members to bootstrap the organisation. Our proposal is that we automatically nominate the existing PSC members for the board, and that community voting members can also put up additional nominations. We would then put the election of the board members to a vote (maintaining the same number of members as are currently in the PSC for now). Once the board has officially been elected, the voting members can then select a chair for the board. If this is not ok for anyone on the current PSC, please state your objection along with an alternate proposal.

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Dear QGIS Community members

As many of you will be aware, in this last year we have been embarking on the process to transition from a loose-knit community organisation to a more formal organisation. This new organisation ‘QGIS.org’ will be a legal entity and will afford us a greater amount of flexibility in how we manage funds, legal agreements and so forth. You can read the statutes for the QGIS.org organisation at [0] below.

Under the statutes of the new organisation, there will be one user group voting member put forward for each registered user group (user group registration page is here [1]). For each user group voting member we will have a community voting member elected. In addition there will be one voting member from the OSGEO leadership. It is probably best explained by way of a simple (contrived) example:

1) The Martian user group puts forward Joe Alien to be their QGIS User Group Voting Member.
2) QGIS committers put forward nominations for a matching Community Voting Member from within the community. Community member with the highest number of nominations is elected. Only people with git commit rights to an official QGIS repository or write access to the QGIS translation platform on transifex can put forward nominations. Nominated person can be any person from within the QGIS community who is willing to serve as a voting QGIS community member.
3)  The Moon user group puts forward Janet Luna to be their QGIS User Group Voting Member.
4) QGIS committers again nominate a matching Community Voting Member
5) OSGEO puts forward one person to act as the OSGEO voting member.

Voting members will elect the QGIS Board, Board Chairman and approve budgets and the annual report. Once elected, the board will make day to day decisions on behalf of the project as needed. The OSGEO voting member will also serve to ensure that there are always an odd number of voting members to avoid deadlocks.

Since we are bootstrapping the QGIS.org organisation, we have not yet elected any voting members. Currently there are 10 QGIS User Groups registered [3], thus we would like to invite all people who have Git commit access to any official QGIS repo, or transifex write access to make their nominations for their community voting members. The 10 consenting nominees with the highest number of nominations will be appointed as community voting members. 

We will close the nomination period on Wed 11 May if at least 10 unique persons have been nominated, otherwise as soon as 10 unique persons have been nominated.

We will maintain a list of the QGIS Voting Members on the web site for public viewing.

After all of the voting members have been elected they will be asked to elect the members of the board. Board members need not be voting members, any QGIS community member can be elected to the board. For formation of the new board, existing PSC members will automatically be nominated and the community voting members can also put up additional nominations. We would then put the election of the board members to a vote (maintaining the same number of members as are currently in the PSC for now). Once the board has officially been elected, the voting members can then select a chair for the board.

By this process we will have a democratically elected board entrusted with stewardship of the new QGIS.org Organisation. 

Each year we will hold an annual general meeting and voting members can elect a new chair, or re-elect the existing chair. Similarly on a rotational basis, board members will be up for re-election each year. If things are a little unclear above, I have made a simple diagram which hopefully clarifies things (see [4] below). Note that Gary Sherman (QGIS project founder) is board member emeritus and this will not be up for re-election.

So if you are eligible to nominate voting members (i.e. you are a committer on any official QGIS repo or a Transifex author), please head over to the link provided in [2] below and make your nomination!

[0] Statutes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FcChHYgoI4FlURrZRYBjD8kB6IBW_BaG0Ieg8TDT0pM/edit?usp=sharing
[1] User group registration: http://goo.gl/forms/6cBt8w97VC
[2] Community voting member nominations form: http://goo.gl/forms/vkoYZkE03C
[3] Registered User Groups: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wte5pfcpOeZ1bfBUn7KJuYzw31_rtKyGqciBPW3RXwg/edit?usp=sharing
[4] Organisation and voting process diagram: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B__vDnQXCKiwdWMxQlN4X1BvZDg/view?usp=sharing

Tim Sutton
QGIS Project Chair

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Tim Sutton
QGIS Project Steering Committee Chair
tim at qgis.org

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