Dear All,
First of all I'd like to give my sincere congratulations to newly
elected board members. Here I want to share some of my feelings around
this board elections.
1. Needless to say all new board members are deserved to win the
election. However as a whole, now we have all WHITE board of directors
only from Europe and North America. We've talked about the importance of
diversity and inclusiveness many times so far, however the reality is
like this. Please don't get me wrong. I'm not writing this because of my
failure in an election. Being nominated and encouragement to run the
election was just great honour to me. For me as Asian, one of most
shocking and disappointing moment in this election was Venka's failure
in an election. Venka has contributed so much to Asian community over
the last 2 years. His contributions and activities reached out not only
to Japan but also to Thailand, Vietnam, India and sometimes to Korea as
well. He also put so much efforts organizing FOSS4G Asia this year. And
I know as a former board member how he restlessly carried out his duty
as president of OSGeo. And finally he failed! I know he didn't answer to
some of quesitons to nominees during the election period. Ok, it’s
excuse however he and I was being tied up with handling a urgent issue
in community. Anyway I and other Asian friends are so shocked that he
was not elected! I bet other Asian members share the same feeling. The
result gave the clear meaning to Asian community, "If Venka can't be a
board member of OSGeo, nobody can be forever from Asia." I already saw
many complaints and discouragement in Asian community. I believe regions
other than Europe and NA have the rights to be reprensented failry. So,
I'd like to ask new board members to fix this kind of wrong
representation of board configuration by adopting new election rules.
2. I believe Jeff McKenna's ambiguous behaviours around election period
made both him and OSGeo untrustworthy. I don't want to mention again
here some of concerns over him in detail during the election. One thing
I'd like to point out is his un-withdrwal from board election after
disclosing the results. Nothing personal, Jeff. Actually I tried to
accept and understand this situation so many times for a couple of days,
but I failed to accept. We're not the children in the kindergarten! How
can it be happened? The last thing I did as a former board member was
approving the motion, "This board election is valid." I was able to
block the motion however I approved the motion. Because I accepted his
withdrawal as sincere one and trusted him. I'm feeling my good intention
was being betrayed. I know I don't have any rights now to change my
previous decision and I don't want to criticise someone here. New board,
this case cleary has shown that there's big loophole in our election
process. If OSGe can't fix it, OSGeo will lose trust and credibility.
Board, you need to bear in mind that there's already bunch of sign of
loosing trust from community.
Many mentioned that OSGeo is run by Do-ocracy. I believe the basis of
Do-ocracy is recognizing of someone's work and trust. If someone's
hardwork is not recognized and acknowledged fairy, who will want to jump
into the matters to fix it? And if someone can't trust the organization,
who wants to put their precious time and efforts to untrustworthy one?
If OSGeo lose the trust, it will lose everything. OSGeo is just shell.
Best regards,
신상희
---
Shin, Sanghee
Gaia3D, Inc. - The GeoSpatial Company
www.gaia3d.com
