[OSGeo-Discuss] End the vote!

[Adrian Custer]

Hey all 'charter' members,

You have nominated a large number of great, passionate creators, 
educators, community builders, and users of free geospatial software to 
become new 'charter' members of OSGeo.


Now, unfortunately, your existing system of voting means that you will 
either
     (1) vote to accept some nominees but not others, or
     (2) bypass the voting process and accept everyone as was
         done last year.
The former sucks since its only effect will now be to 'exclude' or 
'reject' people who are passionate and respected enough to have been 
nominated. In other words, up to now all has been positive, building 
respect and support but, now, the only outcome of *voting* is rejection 
and possibly discouragement of those same people. That seems silly.

So, after this process, you might consider changing things. You might 
examine the consequences of voting by examining how you feel yourselves 
after voting especially about those you did not vote for or by looking 
at who did not get 'voted' in to see if that was because they were not 
great candidates or due to some regional effect. You might then consider 
changing the 'vote' to some other system, such as a system where anyone 
getting x number of 'nominations' gets in. (Of course, that still has 
all the problems that passionate folk on the periphery who are not known 
to enough people in the core might not become 'charter' members but 
that's a design flaw inherent in this club like, two tier member system.)

Voting is not the only way of organizing communities. This vote does not 
seem to help the OSGeo in its mission. You can do better.

cheers,
   ~adrian