Mailing List Archive

A couple of thoughts....

We can verify if a person is a student / academic by their email
address. If it comes from an edu we let them get the discount on the
honor system. Works easily enough. Amazon does it actually.

As for corporate sponsorship on foundation membership. I don't think
it should be allowed.

If you want to be a foundation member that is a personal decision, and
one that should be financed by you.

It's easy enough to spot obvious sponsorship by a company on a wide
scale. I think that as a barrier of entry asking people to pay a
small yearly fee is a pretty decent barrier. And it gets the
openstack foundation some cash. Maybe let people who pay the
foundation have access to an email address or something to make it
worth their while.



-Matt

On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Doug Hellmann
<doug.hellmann@dreamhost.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Christopher B Ferris <chrisfer@us.ibm.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> +1
>>
>> We need to raise the bar on individual membership. Linux Foundation uses a
>> membership fee of $99.00 USD
>> which also gets you into the conference, or something. It isn't an
>> unreasonable amount for any company to pay
>> for it's employees to participate as members; but it will likely
>> discourage silliness such as we have seen in this
>> initial election.
>
>
> It would also discourage individuals, students, and folks in countries where
> $100 US is worth a lot more than it is in the US. It would in turn not
> discourage large companies, since as you point out that's really not all
> that much money, even for 1000 members from a company large enough to have
> 1000 employees. I don't think a membership fee solves the problem.
>
>>
>>
>> The other thing that we need to address is the carrot of the prospect for
>> a Platinum or Gold member to have TWO
>> board seats. This should never have been permitted, as it simply begs to
>> be exploited. Maybe the solution is to
>> limit any VOTING on the board such that only one vote per affiliated
>> member be permitted.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Christopher Ferris
>> IBM Distinguished Engineer, CTO Industry and Cloud Standards
>> Member, IBM Academy of Technology
>> IBM Software Group, Standards Strategy
>> email: chrisfer@us.ibm.com
>> Twitter: christo4ferris
>> phone: +1 508 234 2986
>>
>> -----Doug Hellmann <doug.hellmann@dreamhost.com> wrote: -----
>> To: Thierry Carrez <thierry@openstack.org>
>> From: Doug Hellmann <doug.hellmann@dreamhost.com>
>> Date: 10/03/2012 12:21PM
>> Cc: foundation@lists.openstack.org
>> Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Individual Member Election Statistics
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 4:39 AM, Thierry Carrez <thierry@openstack.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > We need to discuss how to
>>> > raise the bar of membership entry just enough to improve that.
>>>
>>> Alternatively (or additionally), we could switch to Condorcet, which is
>>> an election method that specifically does not fill the proportionality
>>> criteria. 30% of voters won't give you anything, especially if the other
>>> 70% don't like you that much.
>>>
>>> It would favor consensus candidates, which in this case (individual
>>> member election) could be a good idea.
>>
>>
>> I'm not an election system scholar, so please forgive what may be a naive
>> question.
>>
>> I've looked at a couple of descriptions of Condorcet, and I don't see any
>> reason not to use it but I also don't see how it helps solve the problem of
>> a disproportionate number of foundation members being affiliated with a
>> small number of corporate entities. Is there an example or explanation of
>> using a Condorcet system to address this type of issue that you can refer me
>> to, or maybe you could summarize how you see it helping briefly? Perhaps
>> there is just some inherent feature of Condorcet systems that I'm not
>> grokking based on the reading I've done so far.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Doug
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> AFAIK there is a lawyer question about accepted election methods for
>>> corporate boards under Delaware law, but I think that's an option that
>>> we should definitely explore.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Thierry Carrez (ttx)
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Foundation mailing list
>>> Foundation@lists.openstack.org
>>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Foundation mailing list
>> Foundation@lists.openstack.org
>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
>
>
>
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The bylaws limit a corporation to two seats. Limiting to one seat would rule out individual membership for a large number of individuals if their corporation already had a gold or platinum seat. I'm not certain that is a solution.

In this regard, the right thing happened in that certain elected individuals did not obtain a third seat on the board for their corporation. No corporation is going to dominate the Foundation board of 24 directors with 2 seats.

There is room for improvement, but it's very clear to me, at least, that we have changed from a single owner (Rackspace) to a much more diverse leadership at all levels that is much more representative of the overall OpenStack contributor and user base.

And I would like to point out that as far as Dell goes, while they might have a lower number of active code contributors, they are a very active ecosystem partner to OpenStack (e.g. Crowbar + chef recipes) and also a very active deployer of OpenStack-based systems. Right now the primary measure of involvement for individuals is about counting lines of code and I'm not certain that is the only measure. Users of the system, deployers/SIs, and other non-developers need to be represented as much as, or possibly more than, code contributors.


Best,


--Randy

Co-Founder & CTO, Cloudscaling
+1 (415) 787-2253 [78-SCALE for SMS or voice]
TWITTER: twitter.com/randybias
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/randybias






On Oct 3, 2012, at 9:38 AM, Christopher B Ferris <chrisfer@us.ibm.com> wrote:

> The other thing that we need to address is the carrot of the prospect for a Platinum or Gold member to have TWO
> board seats. This should never have been permitted, as it simply begs to be exploited. Maybe the solution is to
> limit any VOTING on the board such that only one vote per affiliated member be permitted.

Exactly. My suggestion was not meant to be discriminatory, but rather to raise the bar above
"press this button". I used $99 because that is what Linux Foundation sets as the bar for individual
membership.

Cheers,

Christopher Ferris
IBM Distinguished Engineer, CTO Industry and Cloud Standards
Member, IBM Academy of Technology
IBM Software Group, Standards Strategy
email: chrisfer@us.ibm.com
Twitter: christo4ferris
phone: +1 508 234 2986

-----Eric Windisch <eric@windisch.us> wrote: -----

>To: Tristan Goode <tristan@aptira.com>
>From: Eric Windisch <eric@windisch.us>
>Date: 10/03/2012 01:39PM
>Cc: "foundation@lists.openstack.org" <foundation@lists.openstack.org>
>Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Individual Member Election
>Statistics
>
>> > Making people pay for membership is something, but $99pa is a
>lot of money in developing nations, so that would discriminate. >
>Plenty of organizations have discount pricing for developing nations.
>Members that reside in a developing nation could pay a discounted
>rate. -- Eric Windisch
>_______________________________________________ Foundation mailing
>list Foundation@lists.openstack.org
>http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation"]http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation

I really appreciate the sentiments shared by Stefano and others about
how fortunate we are to have such talented and thoughtful Individual
Member Directors regardless of their affiliation.

I appreciate Randy Bias' thoughts on how far we have come, and how
fortunate we are that Rackspace and all the sponsors have made this
possible.

From my interactions with the Individual Member Directors all of the
them are particularly focused on the transparency and inclusiveness of
the OpenStack Foundation.

This is reassuring as there is no urgency to "fix" things.


Unfortunately it is true that the current open membership of the
OpenStack Foundation creates a burden on employees of these large
companies, which are working to redefine themselves as "Cloud"
companies to the point that this is always an significant element in
the quarterly financial calls. In this environment, these companies'
leadership encouraging their employees to participate results in the
employees becoming members to vote for for their company.

This pressure to participate does not benefit the employees of these companies.

The inflated membership and herd voting does not benefit the foundation.


Although I agree with using a Condorcet method that doesn't fix this
issue. The solid solution would be to change the diversity rule to
allow no affiliated board members. Based on the impressive candidates
from numerous organizations for the OpenStack Foundation 2012 Board
Member this would not affect the quality and expertise of the board
membership. Let these eight positions be filled by the over 100 other
supporters https://www.openstack.org/foundation/companies/ and
independents.


This can be complimented by a blunt attempt at self-reinforcing good
behavior. Change the "Statement of Interest" to require the applicant
to instead identify how they feel they have participated/contributed
to OpenStack in the last year -- there are no correct answers. This
will be published as part of their profile online.



Thank you,
--
@lloyddewolf
http://www.pistoncloud.com/

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