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

Mon Jun 22 11:51:05 PDT 2015

Can we have a look at how the questions are phrased before it goes out to the community?

Best regards,
Bart

> On 22 Jun 2015, at 20:46, Jeff McKenna <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com> wrote:
> 
> 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)
>>>>>> 
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