Mailing List Archive

On 10/10/2013 08:38 PM, Tristan Goode wrote:
> We're making some progress there....
>
> Today (with many thanks to Todd!!) I got my first _ever_ BoD/committee
> related meeting invite that wasn't scheduled between 1am and 4am! Since I
> do understand that the bulk of BoD is in a few US timezones I said a while
> back in I think the first BoD meeting I am happy to work with that fact,
> but then realised that's kind of selfish. We probably should be scheduling
> meetings fairly for the entire membership, not the convenience of BoD
> members.
>
> Todd's invite was based on a formula I supplied which is really not really
> fair to our members in the Pacific using the "dark zone" of 5 or 7 hours
> depending on summertime that exists between West Coast USA and East Coast
> Australia, meaning everyone that lives outside of that Pacific zone gets
> to attend a meeting between 5am and midnight all year round. Adoption of
> this formula will come back to haunt me if I ever am lucky enough to be
> checking in on the Bora Bora OSUG and find I will have to attend a BoD
> meeting whilst there.
>
> So perhaps to be fair we could look at a compulsory global rotation of
> times for meetings (and compulsory UTC notification times!). There's that
> scary "compulsory" word again that I used yesterday to the BoD mailing
> list about voting and immediate membership ejection for not voting, that
> I'm very pleased to see being put forward for wider debate! I thought it
> was just a crazy Australian democracy thing (and a bunch of other places).
>
> Rotation might be something like each quarter meeting times are bumped 6
> hours along, so we all get to equally share the red eyes and challenges to
> stay awake during some BoD meetings that (I agree with Joshua) should be
> compulsory (wow that word again) attendance for aspiring individual
> candidates. When the topics are things you're passionate about, getting
> sleep beforehand or getting back to sleep after a 2am to 4am session is
> also usually impossible.

Part of me doesn't like the word compulsory. On the other hand, we
enforce a TON of things in this project, and most of them are to keep
any person or any group of people from gaining a status that makes them
more special or more important than any other person or group of people.
As someone who travels the earth constantly, I can tell you dealing with
the OpenStack meetings is nothing if not challenging. However, I can't
imagine what it's like to be ttx and have important meetings at night
every week.

I think we should figure out how to do the above for the tech meetings
too. We've thought about it some, and I think ceilometer actually had an
alternating week schedule. But those had the problem of being too hard
to remember. I kinda like the quarterly rotation - it reminds us that
this is a global effort.

> Or we could use the stats of the membership by country and balance the
> rotation according to the "weight" of membership population around the
> globe.
>
> I also agree with Mark about folks not listening in and joining the BoD
> meeting IRC channel and the etherpads we always do. I'd be really happy to
> give allcomers voice and throw your suggestions in real time into the
> firepit of the BoD if you were actually there at the time. You'd also get
> awareness of how hard the BoD actually works to hash out as much input and
> debate into _every_ decision.

In case you're all wondering - #openstack-foundation is open for
business. Feel free to stop by. Last board meeting the channel was popping!


> Cheers
> Tristan
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Tom Fifield [mailto:tom@openstack.org]
>> Sent: Friday, 11 October 2013 10:30 AM
>> To: foundation@lists.openstack.org
>> Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Individual Member Director Elections
>>
>> On 11/10/13 03:32, Joshua McKenty wrote:
>>> And one last *crazy* idea I had:
>>> - Require candidates for individual director seats to have
>>> attended/dialed-into at least 50% of the board meetings in the past 6
>>> months
>>
>> Aren't the board meetings always at 2am or something? That seems kinda
> harsh :)
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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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2013/10/10 Joshua McKenty <joshua@pistoncloud.com>:
> First, I wanted to restart the PROBLEM that we all seem to be struggling
> with, so that we can use it as a litmus test against proposed solutions.
>
> We want our board to represent the DIVERSITY of the community, rather than
> PROPORTIONALLY representing the membership - even of active members.

I'm not going to try to speak for everyone, but I certainly don't
agree with this.

Proportional representation seems perfectly sound to me, assuming the
needs and desires of whatever minorities we have in the community are
given appropriate attention by the elected individuals. That's about
as much representation you can expect to have as a minority, since
there's a limited number of seats, but a potentially unlimited number
of minorities.

> I believe I was the first person to point out problems with our voting
> mechanisms, after the first individual member elections.

I'm not sure where you're going with this?

> Change voting mechanism:
> - Limit of one seat per organization (instead of two)

I'm frankly tired of this limitation on number of seats per
organization. I find the implied assumption that there's some sort of
one-to-one relationship between corporate affiliation on one side and
the set of opinions and values held on the other side absolutely
ridiculous. Just because two individuals work for the same company
doesn't mean they hold the same views. I disagree with Rick *all the
time*. Also, just because two individuals work for different companies
doesn't mean they disagree on everything. Even if we assume that board
members strictly represented their respective companies,
representatives from two similar companies (say, two startups in the
private cloud space or two public cloud vendors, etc.) are very likely
to agree on most topics, so how's that for diversity?

My point is that if we have e.g. three people that *everyone* adored
and respected and wanted to be on the board, they should totally be on
the board! Yes, even if they by some crazy coincidence happened to
work for the same company. We're not giving the board members enough
credit if we think they're going to replace all their opinions with
new ones if they switch companies.

There are many ways to address the problem of people getting elected
mostly by people from their own company and not really anybody from
outside their company. My personal favourite is: Disallow people from
voting for people working for the same company as themselves. If N
people from company A can garner enough votes to join the board based
exclusively on votes from people not working for company A, I could
not possibly care less if N is greater than 1.

> While I fully support the notion of requiring members to remain "active", we
> haven't been able to come up with an "active" test that folks find
> even-handed beyond the "membership questionnaire" that's already in the
> Bylaws. If we can make voting compulsory, we can just thrown an occasional
> general election to clean the roles.

Some other projects have membership boards that evaluate whether an
individual meets the requirements for membership (typically some sort
of sustained, significant contribution (the interpretation of which is
up to the membership board, but could be anything from writing code to
triaging bugs, from writing documentation to answering questions on
user mailing lists, etc.)). I think that has worked quite well.

--
Soren Hansen
AVP, Chief Architect
Reliance Jio Infocomm, Ltd.

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On 10/10/2013 12:32 PM, Joshua McKenty wrote:

> During the foundation drafting process, I spent a fair amount of time
> arguing for the use of Condorset with various lawyers - but I was
> stymied by the apparent REQUIREMENT for a Delaware corporation to use
> cumulative voting to elect board members. (I've dug into this a bit,
> and afaict there's no requirement in the IRS 501©6 paperwork, just in
> the Delaware corporation stuff[1]).

I wanted to come back to this real quick, so I went and looked up the
corporations act in delaware:

http://delcode.delaware.gov/title8/c001/sc07/

The cumulative voting requirement only applies to stock corporations. We
are a non-stock body. Section 214 (the cumulative restriction) should
not, unless I'm REALLY bad at reading, apply. There is a basic set of
members rights that are default, but are subject to override by the
certificate of incorporation or they bylaws.

> There's a loophole, of course - the loophole that we use to elect Gold
> members.
> We don't elect them. We elect a Gold Member "Selector" - who APPOINTS a
> director. In fact, all of the Platinum and Gold member seats have
> appointed directors.
>
> (IANAL, so it may not be a loophole - but it sure works like one.)
>
> If we're going to go through the work of putting forward an election
> ballot to the general membership (which I agree we ought to do), and
> we're going to rally to get the requisite 25% of the membership to vote
> on the damn thing, then I suggest we include as many of the following as
> we can agree on:
>
> Change voting mechanism:
> - Condorset CIVS (might require a loophole or some radical legal work)
> - Limit of one seat per organization (instead of two)
>
> Raise bar on membership:
> - Suspend membership immediately upon failing to vote in a general election
>
> And one last *crazy* idea I had:
> - Require candidates for individual director seats to have
> attended/dialed-into at least 50% of the board meetings in the past 6 months
>
> (That last one is somewhat preemptive against two issues: Firstly, we've
> had brand new members with no previous involvement in OpenStack running
> for the board for political reasons. And secondly, I'd hate to see a
> high rate of attrition in new Directors once they realize what a
> mind-numbing job this is ;)
>
> While I fully support the notion of requiring members to remain
> "active", we haven't been able to come up with an "active" test that
> folks find even-handed beyond the "membership questionnaire" that's
> already in the Bylaws. If we can make voting compulsory, we can just
> thrown an occasional general election to clean the roles.
>
> 1. http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Other-Non-Profits/Life-Cycle-of-a-Business-League-(Trade-Association)
> --
>
> Joshua McKenty
> Chief Technology Officer
> Piston Cloud Computing, Inc.
> +1 (650) 242-5683
> +1 (650) 283-6846
> http://www.pistoncloud.com
>
> "Oh, Westley, we'll never survive!"
> "Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."
>
> On Oct 9, 2013, at 4:24 PM, Ryan Lane <rlane@wikimedia.org
> <mailto:rlane@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org
>> <mailto:fungi@yuggoth.org>> wrote:
>>
>> On 2013-10-09 17:06:03 -0400 (-0400), Ryan Lane wrote:
>> > Aren't many people in this thread saying there is indeed
>> > something wrong with the election method being used? It allows
>> > easy ballot stuffing.
>>
>> Part of the counterargument is that the mere dozens of us expressing
>> concern on a mailing list are but a miniscule portion of the
>> thousands of registered foundation members, which supposedly
>> suggests that a vast majority of the members are fine with the
>> status quo (or more likely completely unaware this conversation is
>> going on, or perhaps even simply disinterested in election mechanics
>> altogether).
>>
>>
>> Which doesn't mean that the argument is invalid, just that it needs
>> more visibility. The voting record clearly shows there's a problem
>> with the voting system (even though there's nothing wrong with the
>> current board). Most people in the community have probably never seen
>> the voting record stats, though.
>>
>> - Ryan
>> _______________________________________________
>> Foundation mailing list
>> Foundation@lists.openstack.org <mailto: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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Foundation@lists.openstack.org
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For non-stock corporations, the Bylaws are expected to detail the ins and
outs of who gets to vote and how votes are cast and how they are tallied.
If the bylaws don't, then the following applies: § 215-c


On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Monty Taylor <mordred@inaugust.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 10/10/2013 12:32 PM, Joshua McKenty wrote:
>
> > During the foundation drafting process, I spent a fair amount of time
> > arguing for the use of Condorset with various lawyers - but I was
> > stymied by the apparent REQUIREMENT for a Delaware corporation to use
> > cumulative voting to elect board members. (I've dug into this a bit,
> > and afaict there's no requirement in the IRS 501©6 paperwork, just in
> > the Delaware corporation stuff[1]).
>
> I wanted to come back to this real quick, so I went and looked up the
> corporations act in delaware:
>
> http://delcode.delaware.gov/title8/c001/sc07/
>
> The cumulative voting requirement only applies to stock corporations. We
> are a non-stock body. Section 214 (the cumulative restriction) should
> not, unless I'm REALLY bad at reading, apply. There is a basic set of
> members rights that are default, but are subject to override by the
> certificate of incorporation or they bylaws.
>
> > There's a loophole, of course - the loophole that we use to elect Gold
> > members.
> > We don't elect them. We elect a Gold Member "Selector" - who APPOINTS a
> > director. In fact, all of the Platinum and Gold member seats have
> > appointed directors.
> >
> > (IANAL, so it may not be a loophole - but it sure works like one.)
> >
> > If we're going to go through the work of putting forward an election
> > ballot to the general membership (which I agree we ought to do), and
> > we're going to rally to get the requisite 25% of the membership to vote
> > on the damn thing, then I suggest we include as many of the following as
> > we can agree on:
> >
> > Change voting mechanism:
> > - Condorset CIVS (might require a loophole or some radical legal work)
> > - Limit of one seat per organization (instead of two)
> >
> > Raise bar on membership:
> > - Suspend membership immediately upon failing to vote in a general
> election
> >
> > And one last *crazy* idea I had:
> > - Require candidates for individual director seats to have
> > attended/dialed-into at least 50% of the board meetings in the past 6
> months
> >
> > (That last one is somewhat preemptive against two issues: Firstly, we've
> > had brand new members with no previous involvement in OpenStack running
> > for the board for political reasons. And secondly, I'd hate to see a
> > high rate of attrition in new Directors once they realize what a
> > mind-numbing job this is ;)
> >
> > While I fully support the notion of requiring members to remain
> > "active", we haven't been able to come up with an "active" test that
> > folks find even-handed beyond the "membership questionnaire" that's
> > already in the Bylaws. If we can make voting compulsory, we can just
> > thrown an occasional general election to clean the roles.
> >
> > 1.
> http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Other-Non-Profits/Life-Cycle-of-a-Business-League-(Trade-Association)
> > --
> >
> > Joshua McKenty
> > Chief Technology Officer
> > Piston Cloud Computing, Inc.
> > +1 (650) 242-5683
> > +1 (650) 283-6846
> > http://www.pistoncloud.com
> >
> > "Oh, Westley, we'll never survive!"
> > "Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."
> >
> > On Oct 9, 2013, at 4:24 PM, Ryan Lane <rlane@wikimedia.org
> > <mailto:rlane@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org
> >> <mailto:fungi@yuggoth.org>> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 2013-10-09 17:06:03 -0400 (-0400), Ryan Lane wrote:
> >> > Aren't many people in this thread saying there is indeed
> >> > something wrong with the election method being used? It allows
> >> > easy ballot stuffing.
> >>
> >> Part of the counterargument is that the mere dozens of us expressing
> >> concern on a mailing list are but a miniscule portion of the
> >> thousands of registered foundation members, which supposedly
> >> suggests that a vast majority of the members are fine with the
> >> status quo (or more likely completely unaware this conversation is
> >> going on, or perhaps even simply disinterested in election mechanics
> >> altogether).
> >>
> >>
> >> Which doesn't mean that the argument is invalid, just that it needs
> >> more visibility. The voting record clearly shows there's a problem
> >> with the voting system (even though there's nothing wrong with the
> >> current board). Most people in the community have probably never seen
> >> the voting record stats, though.
> >>
> >> - Ryan
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Foundation mailing list
> >> Foundation@lists.openstack.org <mailto: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
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Foundation mailing list
> Foundation@lists.openstack.org
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/foundation
>

I find the whole membership pruning a bit too severe. There are many ways
to be involved in the community that are not very easy to track online. I
would give the example of someone who regularly attends meetups at their
local meetup group. That certainly qualifies as being an active member of
the OpenStack community, but It is very difficult to track this at the
global level. Are we going remove this person from the community
membership?



I also find touting the net increase we have in membership at every event,
asking people to sign up and then removing them, a bit disingenuous. Maybe
we need different classes of members? Voting/Non-voting individual members
etc.







--

Kavit Munshi

Chief Technical Officer

EVP Aptira India

1800 APTIRA

+61 2 8030 2333

+91 971 292 9850

@aptira



*From:* Jim Jagielski [mailto:jimjag@gmail.com]
*Sent:* 11 October 2013 22:02
*To:* Monty Taylor
*Cc:* foundation@lists.openstack.org
*Subject:* Re: [OpenStack Foundation] Individual Member Director Elections



For non-stock corporations, the Bylaws are expected to detail the ins and
outs of who gets to vote and how votes are cast and how they are tallied.
If the bylaws don't, then the following applies: *§ 215-c*



On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Monty Taylor <mordred@inaugust.com> wrote:



On 10/10/2013 12:32 PM, Joshua McKenty wrote:

> During the foundation drafting process, I spent a fair amount of time
> arguing for the use of Condorset with various lawyers - but I was
> stymied by the apparent REQUIREMENT for a Delaware corporation to use
> cumulative voting to elect board members. (I've dug into this a bit,
> and afaict there's no requirement in the IRS 501©6 paperwork, just in
> the Delaware corporation stuff[1]).

I wanted to come back to this real quick, so I went and looked up the
corporations act in delaware:

http://delcode.delaware.gov/title8/c001/sc07/

The cumulative voting requirement only applies to stock corporations. We
are a non-stock body. Section 214 (the cumulative restriction) should
not, unless I'm REALLY bad at reading, apply. There is a basic set of
members rights that are default, but are subject to override by the
certificate of incorporation or they bylaws.


> There's a loophole, of course - the loophole that we use to elect Gold
> members.
> We don't elect them. We elect a Gold Member "Selector" - who APPOINTS a
> director. In fact, all of the Platinum and Gold member seats have
> appointed directors.
>
> (IANAL, so it may not be a loophole - but it sure works like one.)
>
> If we're going to go through the work of putting forward an election
> ballot to the general membership (which I agree we ought to do), and
> we're going to rally to get the requisite 25% of the membership to vote
> on the damn thing, then I suggest we include as many of the following as
> we can agree on:
>
> Change voting mechanism:
> - Condorset CIVS (might require a loophole or some radical legal work)
> - Limit of one seat per organization (instead of two)
>
> Raise bar on membership:
> - Suspend membership immediately upon failing to vote in a general
election
>
> And one last *crazy* idea I had:
> - Require candidates for individual director seats to have
> attended/dialed-into at least 50% of the board meetings in the past 6
months
>
> (That last one is somewhat preemptive against two issues: Firstly, we've
> had brand new members with no previous involvement in OpenStack running
> for the board for political reasons. And secondly, I'd hate to see a
> high rate of attrition in new Directors once they realize what a
> mind-numbing job this is ;)
>
> While I fully support the notion of requiring members to remain
> "active", we haven't been able to come up with an "active" test that
> folks find even-handed beyond the "membership questionnaire" that's
> already in the Bylaws. If we can make voting compulsory, we can just
> thrown an occasional general election to clean the roles.
>
> 1.
http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Other-Non-Profits/Life-Cycle-of-a-Business-League-(Trade-Association)
> --
>
> Joshua McKenty
> Chief Technology Officer
> Piston Cloud Computing, Inc.
> +1 (650) 242-5683
> +1 (650) 283-6846
> http://www.pistoncloud.com
>
> "Oh, Westley, we'll never survive!"
> "Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."
>
> On Oct 9, 2013, at 4:24 PM, Ryan Lane <rlane@wikimedia.org

> <mailto:rlane@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 7:12 PM, Jeremy Stanley <fungi@yuggoth.org

>> <mailto:fungi@yuggoth.org>> wrote:
>>
>> On 2013-10-09 17:06:03 -0400 (-0400), Ryan Lane wrote:
>> > Aren't many people in this thread saying there is indeed
>> > something wrong with the election method being used? It allows
>> > easy ballot stuffing.
>>
>> Part of the counterargument is that the mere dozens of us expressing
>> concern on a mailing list are but a miniscule portion of the
>> thousands of registered foundation members, which supposedly
>> suggests that a vast majority of the members are fine with the
>> status quo (or more likely completely unaware this conversation is
>> going on, or perhaps even simply disinterested in election mechanics
>> altogether).
>>
>>
>> Which doesn't mean that the argument is invalid, just that it needs
>> more visibility. The voting record clearly shows there's a problem
>> with the voting system (even though there's nothing wrong with the
>> current board). Most people in the community have probably never seen
>> the voting record stats, though.
>>
>> - Ryan
>> _______________________________________________
>> Foundation mailing list

>> Foundation@lists.openstack.org <mailto: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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