[Board] motions from June 18 meeting - making OSGeo Charter membership more exclusive

[Jeff McKenna]

The CRO, Vasile, has been working on a poll for the community through 
our LimeSurvey instance, regarding the voting threshold.  I believe he 
is shortly announcing this to the community.  (we spoke this morning 
about this)

-jeff



On 2015-06-22 3:11 PM, Jeff McKenna wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I'm very glad to see people speaking up now.
>
> We do have time, in fact if we needed to we can spend another month on
> this (last year's voting didn't start until 19 July).  I began this
> process earlier this year, on 25 May, because yes I saw this debate
> coming, I wanted to give time for change to occur.  So, I am against
> deferring any change until next year (as you know, that is never a
> successful way to make change).  I'm happy to use the extra time to
> decide on the 2015 process if we need to.
>
>
> -jeff
>
>
>
> On 2015-06-22 2:48 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
>> There is definitely room for improvement to make sure the foundation is
>> protected from a hostile take over which is becoming very unlikely given
>> today's number of charter members anyway. But if we are still worried,
>> then giving more importance to the NO votes in the calculation of the
>> threshold is likely part of the solution. I just don't know what it the
>> perfect solution would be.
>>
>>
>> Unfortunately, after looking at last year's numbers again I don't think
>> that the proposed change to move to 50% YES votes is much better than
>> the current situation unless we better educate our voters since based on
>> last year's results it would just draw an arbitrary line in the middle
>> of the list. Last year all candidates got 39% or more... that 39% is
>> very close to 50%, and 29 of the 64 candidates were in the 45% to 55%
>> range and most of them being people mostly active and visible at the
>> local level in their own country or community. Many of them would have
>> been turned down just because they are not popular enough outside of
>> their home country to get an extra 5% votes to meet the arbitrary 50%
>> line, that doesn't feel very inclusive to me.
>>
>>
>> Short of having a better short term solution in the next week or so, my
>> vote as charter member would be to keep the rules unchanged for this
>> year and proceed with the 2015 election. ... and as we say every year...
>> those who care enough to change the process (and I'm not one of them),
>> should start working on new rules early in the fall to avoid repeating
>> this process discussion again next sprint.
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2015-06-22 1:19 PM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
>>> Or someone else suggested:
>>>
>>> (YES-NO) / (YES+NO+ABSTAIN)
>>>
>>> But something doesn’t seem right the way we measure it now.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Bart
>>>
>>>> On 22 Jun 2015, at 19:10, Bart van den Eijnden <bartvde at osgis.nl>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Actually the way we measure now (% support) there is no difference
>>>> between a NO and an ABSTAIN? Should we not leave out ABSTAIN from the
>>>> total population?
>>>>
>>>> So:
>>>>
>>>> YES / (NO + YES)  = percentage support?
>>>>
>>>> Best regards,
>>>> Bart
>>>>
>>>>> On 22 Jun 2015, at 19:06, Peter Baumann
>>>>> <p.baumann at jacobs-university.de> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> just to speak it out: of course NOs are one way of upvoting a
>>>>> favourite candidate.
>>>>> -Peter
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 06/22/15 19:02, Jorge Sanz wrote:
>>>>>> 2015-06-22 18:09 GMT+02:00 Daniel Morissette
>>>>>> <dmorissette at mapgears.com>:
>>>>>>> Margherita makes a very good point here, that if someone gets
>>>>>>> multiple NO
>>>>>>> votes then they are probably not a good candidate. That's what I
>>>>>>> would have
>>>>>>> thought as well.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> However, after last year's election I was extremely surprised to
>>>>>>> see that
>>>>>>> even the top-5 candidates which all got over 70% support also got
>>>>>>> 2-3 NO
>>>>>>> votes each:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Election_2014_detailed_results
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I don't understand why someone would vote NO for those 5 people as
>>>>>>> charter
>>>>>>> members given track record. I can only imagine that not everybody
>>>>>>> interprets
>>>>>>> the "NO" vote to mean the same thing...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm pretty sure of that Daniel, and we only can try to improve that
>>>>>> being well explicit on the instructions but still many people don't
>>>>>> read the explanations.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I remember watching someone votes (no name, just his/her votes) and I
>>>>>> was surprised of seeing a lot of NOes and thinking "he has not
>>>>>> understood what we wanted to mean by a YES/NO/Abstain".
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We'll try this year to improve the instructions on the voting,
>>>>>> definitely.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Dr. Peter Baumann
>>>>> - Professor of Computer Science, Jacobs University Bremen
>>>>>   www.faculty.jacobs-university.de/pbaumann
>>>>>   mail: p.baumann at jacobs-university.de
>>>>>   tel: +49-421-200-3178, fax: +49-421-200-493178
>>>>> - Executive Director, rasdaman GmbH Bremen (HRB 26793)
>>>>>   www.rasdaman.com, mail: baumann at rasdaman.com
>>>>>   tel: 0800-rasdaman, fax: 0800-rasdafax, mobile: +49-173-5837882
>>>>> "Si forte in alienas manus oberraverit hec peregrina epistola
>>>>> incertis ventis dimissa, sed Deo commendata, precamur ut ei reddatur
>>>>> cui soli destinata, nec preripiat quisquam non sibi parata." (mail
>>>>> disclaimer, AD 1083)
>>>>>