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

Mon Jun 22 11:56:59 PDT 2015

Indeed how the wording is stated is very important.  Even how we point 
to this thread, will affect the responses.  It is very tricky, that is 
why I waited for the CRO before I made any messages to Discuss.

-jeff

On 2015-06-22 3:51 PM, Bart van den Eijnden wrote:
> 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)
>>>>>>>