All,
*Introduction*
Prompted by André Schnabel, Cor Nouws and others on the Community
Council, the Community Council would like to change its enabling
Charter to broaden eligibility and thus participation in the Council.
This amended Charter, Version 1.2, has been unanimously approved by
the Council, as well as by the Project Leads of Accepted, Native-Lang,
and Incubator categories.
The proposed amended Charter is at:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Items/Charter_Proposal
The key provisions relating to Council composition and eligibility are
in #4:
NEW:
<quote>
Council Members
• The Ten Representatives:
The Council will be a group of ten members, made up primarily of those
individuals who are active contributors to the project, have taken
responsibility for one or more aspects of it, and have the respect of
their fellow contributors. This is in accordance with the principle of
"meritocracy" upon which Open Source software throughout the world is
built. The ten members will consist of representatives from following
categories:
• Three “Code Contributor Representatives”
Three persons who represent the developers who actively contribute
source code to the OpenOffice.org code repository. They communicate
concerns and proposals of individual as well as corporate code
developers. Typically they should be members of the core projects of
OpenOffice.org.
• Three “Product Development Representatives”:
These three representatives will be responsible for representing
general will of all project members contributing to the product
development that goes beyond code contribution (e. g. documentation,
qa, distribution, marketing ...).
• Two "Lang Representatives":
Once elected, the Lang Representatives are expected to actively
coordinate and communicate the concerns and proposals of all Native
Language Projects so that no individual language or regional group is
alienated from the mainstream of OpenOffice.org community life.
• One Community Contributor Representative:
One person who has demonstrated active participation in the Project
and advocacy of end users, but is not eligible for election for any of
the other seats on the Council. This particularly refers to prominent
members of OpenOffice.org's online user community.
• One Sun Staff Member:
One representative from Sun Microsystems. As the founding member and
sponsor of OpenOffice.org it is vital to understand Sun's strategy and
position on OpenOffice.org issues. Therefore the council will include
one person appointed by Sun who can represent Sun as well as
championing Council recommendations and requests to Sun.
</quote>
***Process for changing the Charter***
The process is multistep and detailed:
<quote from http://council.openoffice.org/CouncilProposal.html >
Changes to this Charter: Any alteration of the terms of this charter
requires a consensus vote of the Council, which must then be ratified
by all of the following means:
* A two-thirds majority vote of the Leads of the Accepted Projects
(except Lang) and Community Managers.
* A two-thirds majority vote of the Leads of Native Language Projects.
* A plebiscite on [email protected] or its successor(s) in
purpose as a general Community forum.
</quote>
-- The community manager (Louis) has approved the changes, as have at
least 2/3 of the leads (primary leads) of the Accepted Projects and
the Native-Language leads.--
** We now need to conduct a plebiscite on this list, the primary
discuss list for OpenOffice.org.
A plebiscite here means a referendum on the merits of the proposal.
Serious objections to the proposal at hand will stop its course, as
such would identify logical shortcomings that must be addressed. A
positive outcome, where there are no serious objections and the vote
trend suggests that the community are in agreement, will put the
proposal immediately into effect.
I ask that you approve or disapprove of the proposal by indicating a
+1/-1 and sending your vote to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Yes, I know
that it will clutter things up for a short while--one week. But
keeping this public is good.)
** Eligibility to vote**
Who can vote? "Community members": those who have registered on the
OpenOffice.org site. (See http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/guidelines.html
, under "Members.") If you have not yet registered, now is the time.
** Deadline: Voting will last until the end of Friday, 12 December,
UTC.**
** Then what...?**
Once we have voted, we can initiate the election process for the first
two candidates, and I hope we can do it before the end of this year.
(Details of the process will come soon, but it entails getting
candidates to step forth and stand for election, then holding the
election, a multi-week process.)
Thanks,
Louis
--
Louis Suarez-Potts,
Community Manager, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
OpenOffice.org
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