[OSGeo-Discuss] [Election 2014] Nominations finish tomorrow!!

[Jeff McKenna]

Indeed as I informed the Board privately last night, in another 
non-profit software org there is a hostile take-over trying to 
happen...so our bylaws on elections are very important.

But if Venka and other Charter members want changes in the bylaws it 
should be made possible, and considered strongly by the Board.

-jeff



On 2014-08-01 7:40 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> Venka,
> Further to Jorge's email, the reason we need to vote in charter members
> (rather than accepting everyone who applies) is to meet OSGeo bylaws
> which state that we need to vote in new charter members every year.
> The reason for the bylaws is to avoid hostile take-over. Admittedly very
> unlikely, but still possible.
>
> So we have changed our voting processes to try and be as inclusive as
> possible, basically aiming to ensure that everyone who is interested,
> and actively contributing toward OSGeo should be voted in for charter
> membership.
>
> On 2/08/2014 2:30 am, Jorge Sanz wrote:
>> 2014-08-01 15:23 GMT+02:00 Venkatesh Raghavan
>> <raghavan at media.osaka-cu.ac.jp>:
>>>
>>> What is the "voting" for, I though all the  nominated members would be
>>> automatically
>>> elected.  Perhaps I am the only one not aware of the new election rules.
>>> Can you clarify please.
>>>
>>> Venka
>> Hi Venka, thanks for raising the question.
>>
>> On previous years the Board allocated a number of seats and if there
>> were more nominations than seats then elections were conducted, so
>> some people could not get the membership if they were at the end of
>> the ranking. Other years no election was needed because there were
>> less nominations than seats, so everyone was automatically accepted.
>>
>> As was discussed in June[1], a new procedure was designed[2]. On this
>> new procedure, there is no limit of seats for new charter members, the
>> nominations are carried as every year but instead of having a number
>> of seats, we will have a different criteria for accepting new members.
>> Another difference is that instead of voting by e-mail, with 180
>> members, we will use an electronic voting system.
>>
>> For every nominee, current Charter Members will have to decide say
>> "Yes", "No" or "Abstain" for their acceptance. This way we assure that
>> supported nominees are accepted. The criteria will be:
>>
>> - The nominee needs to have more Yes than No
>> - The nominee needs to have more than 5% of Yes of voting members.
>>
>>
>> And then we arrive to one VERY important point in my opinion. For me,
>> the +1 and seconds on discuss mean a LOT, because maybe a I don't know
>> the nominee, but I know many of the nominators and seconders, and I
>> trust their criteria so they add points for me to vote a *Yes* instead
>> of an *Abstain*.
>>
>> There are more than 60 nominations, so checking every nominee
>> discussion will take a while for Charter Members, but it's a very
>> important excercise to be responsible on our vote on who will be
>> accepted.
>>
>> Sorry for the long mail, I hope it makes sense!!
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> [1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2014-June/thread.html
>> [2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Membership_Process
>>
>>
>>