[OSGeo-Discuss] withdrawal from Board election

Sun Oct 22 05:45:25 PDT 2017

Open letter to Jeff McKenna.

Dear Jeff:

I am so sad about the situation that led you to ask about the withdrawal.

All of us, OSGeo members, no matter the position on the organization, are
volunteers.

We volunteer our time, our knowledge, our resources, our energy, sometimes
even our family.

We don’t make comparisons between the someone that took one minute to make
a contribution, with the other someone who took 5 minutes. Maybe this last
statement its not 100% true, the exception I see is when we nominate a
person for the board and we want the rest of the community to notice the
contributions that are done by the nominee.

I was the first person to second your nomination, even when I was nominated
myself, because, I don’t see any of the nominees as opponents, I see them
as work team. From the fact that none of us participated on any attack of
any kind I deduce that we have the same view about each other: we are a
team.

At the moment of your nomination, I see you trying to keep up to date the
OSGeo wiki pages, twitting events, volunteering time for SAC, planning to
go to a FOSS4G, doing administration of GSoC OSGeo program, applying for
GCI program, asking for volunteers, commenting on my poster design, making
the MapServer releases, and maybe more things that I don’t know about, but
I am leaving at the end of this list: you were also helping the CRO.

Because of your extra will to help and to give more to the community, how
fortunate the CRO was to have your help for the charter member elections,
specially this year, with so many new nominated people for charter member,
and how unfortunate for you to be pointed at because of the helping
inertia, keep on helping. Even when you stepped down from helping the CRO
to accept the nomination.

I must tell you that, not even in my wildest dreams I expected to be asked
if I would accept to be part of the board, I consider that an honor, and it
comes with a lot of responsibilities. If instead of you helping the CRO,
was me the one helping the CRO, I would have done the same, step down to
accept the nomination, basically because someone considers that my
possible, non CRO, future contributions are more valuable than contributing
helping the CRO.

One thing that worries me is to see that helping so much, deserves an
attack of such magnitude, and if its not for your “helping the CRO” reason,
and, despite of being a reminder, the “stepping down from board past” that
was started, might have been the cheery of this sour cake.

I don’t know about that past, and I don’t ask, as I mentioned I have being
only two years on the organization, I only know about what I have seen
during these 2 years, and that knowledge gives me a feeling of what I want
to see in the future.

Based on what I see, and what I can foresee with you on the board, I am not
withdrawing my second-ing your nomination made by Nicolas Bozon.

As a person, I can understand, and I fully support what ever decision you
make/made, to keep your mind in peace, after all things that have happened.

There are other things that worries me for the future:

- Members could refrain from nominating (or seconding a nomination) because
when you nominate a person, you never ever want the person to be treated
like that,

- We all make mistakes, and the fear of being overly attacked because of
that speck of sawdust, could refrain accepting the nomination.

- Members could stop asking about what they feel is important because they
don’t know how a question can be overly used or be considered  by others.

This really was a lose-lose situation.

You can be sure you that no matter what the outcome is, because, as charter
member, I will do, within my capabilities and knowledge, what ever I can,
for this kind of situation never to repeat in the future to any of us.

Despite of being repetitive, I understand what you are going through, and
you have my support and friendship.

With all my respect and admiration, your friend and colleague,

Celia Virginia Vergara Castillo.

OSGeo Charter Member

On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 9:34 AM, Jeff McKenna <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com
> wrote:

> Dear CRO,
>
> Please accept my withdrawal from the Board election.  I am sorry to cause
> all of the problems so clearly explained by so many here publicly this
> election.
>
> I wish to take the time now to thank all of the candidates for
> volunteering their time for the OSGeo community.
>
> Yours,
>
> -Jeff McKenna
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

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