Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
I think it is nice to have a choice for this specific purpose, but it is not mandatory. Delaying the process is not going to make people more exciting to participate, There may be a misunderstanding. What I proposed is not a delay. What I proposed is a reminder/request, We want more candidates. People who were hesitating might offer when they see that request. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
On Thu, May 23, 2013 4:57 pm, Richard Stallman wrote: It is not a good thing when there are so few candidates that nearly all have to be elected. With just 8 candidates and a 7-member board, we are only voting about which single one of these candidate not to put on the board. That is getting pretty close to no choice at all. What would we do if there were only 7 candidates? If there were only 6? I think in the instance that there are not enough candidates to elect, the empty spots would be treated as vacancies under the bylaws. I'd need to check, but I think then the directors in office can fill the remaining spots. That said, I don't think that we are near that position at this point that we really need to worry about it. My point about the candidates this time being really strong is that I think there were a few people who were thinking of running but who decided not to run against the people who had already put themselves forward. I propose changing the election rules for future elections so that if the number of candidates is less than 7/4 the size of the board, there will be another request for candidates, giving 5 days for people to step forward. I don't object to this change, but I worry about the wait and see attitude it could encourage for people who might be more timid about running. I don't like the idea of two waves of nominations if we could avoid it, and if only 7 people throw their hats in the ring, if they are solid candidates I don't think there's a problem with that. As I was saying above, I think there's been some self selection this time. karen If that squeezes the subsequent step, then expand it by moving all the previous dates 5 days earlier. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
My point about the candidates this time being really strong is that I think there were a few people who were thinking of running but who decided not to run against the people who had already put themselves forward. That is unfortunate. The members ought to have the choice. I don't object to this change, but I worry about the wait and see attitude it could encourage for people who might be more timid about running. Didn't you just say that they are already doing just that? How can we encourage people to nominate themselves earlier? Perhaps announcing the nominations only at the close of the period would do it. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 11:29 PM, Karen Sandler ka...@gnome.org wrote: On Thu, May 23, 2013 4:57 pm, Richard Stallman wrote: It is not a good thing when there are so few candidates that nearly all have to be elected. With just 8 candidates and a 7-member board, we are only voting about which single one of these candidate not to put on the board. That is getting pretty close to no choice at all. What would we do if there were only 7 candidates? If there were only 6? I think in the instance that there are not enough candidates to elect, the empty spots would be treated as vacancies under the bylaws. I'd need to check, but I think then the directors in office can fill the remaining spots. That said, I don't think that we are near that position at this point that we really need to worry about it. My point about the candidates this time being really strong is that I think there were a few people who were thinking of running but who decided not to run against the people who had already put themselves forward. That would be unfortunate. It is hard to put your name out there and especially so if there is a lot of people who are perceived as strong. This is not my first attempt at running for the board. While I had good name recognition amongst the most active developers in GNOME, nobody outside of IRC really knew who I was. In fact it might be still the case that people might not know who I am. :-) I ran and I think I placed second to last place. I don't know if I would fare any better but who cares? The point is that as long as people elect folks with diversified skills then I think it is going to be fine. There is a propensity to elect members who are well known and I hope that foundation members resist that and look at the core skills. Who you elect on the board will be important for the health of the project. So if you were thinking of running then I think you should speak up or mail Karen, maybe we can make a special dispensation and get you on the ballot? sri I propose changing the election rules for future elections so that if the number of candidates is less than 7/4 the size of the board, there will be another request for candidates, giving 5 days for people to step forward. I don't object to this change, but I worry about the wait and see attitude it could encourage for people who might be more timid about running. I don't like the idea of two waves of nominations if we could avoid it, and if only 7 people throw their hats in the ring, if they are solid candidates I don't think there's a problem with that. As I was saying above, I think there's been some self selection this time. karen If that squeezes the subsequent step, then expand it by moving all the previous dates 5 days earlier. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
On Sat, 2013-05-25 at 15:23 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: My point about the candidates this time being really strong is that I think there were a few people who were thinking of running but who decided not to run against the people who had already put themselves forward. That is unfortunate. The members ought to have the choice. I used to have the same concern. Even more, the first time I ran was for this specific reason; which now seems unreasonable to me. I think it is nice to have a choice for this specific purpose, but it is not mandatory. Delaying the process is not going to make people more exciting to participate, and people already running have enough interest to participate that it is ok for me. [...] How can we encourage people to nominate themselves earlier? IMHO, for many people is not clear what the board of directors does and its limitations. Neither what it should be expected for a director nor what could be done that would be impossible otherwise. To give you an idea: among the proposals, I think there are several of them that could be done without being a director. I bet some candidates think the same. IMHO, for contributors who have not been in the board is hard to run for the first time and have a solid proposal (or even have a proposal at all). -- Germán Poo-Caamaño http://calcifer.org/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Germán Póo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org wrote: On Sat, 2013-05-25 at 15:23 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: IMHO, for many people is not clear what the board of directors does and its limitations. Neither what it should be expected for a director nor what could be done that would be impossible otherwise. Sadly, I must agree that a lot of people don't know what the board is doing. There isn't really a lot of communication between the board and the foundation. But the fault lies in both. Attempts have been made to have meetings, but they haven't been good attendance. I have forwarded our marketing minutes to foundation-list and I never really got any feedback on the things. I would like to see more traffic on foundation-list. To give you an idea: among the proposals, I think there are several of them that could be done without being a director. I bet some candidates think the same. Indeed. Even outreach as several of us have been doing doesn't strictly require being a director. But I am interested in formulating external partnerships and that does feel like I need to look at being on the board. IMHO, for contributors who have not been in the board is hard to run for the first time and have a solid proposal (or even have a proposal at all). Sure.. -- Germán Poo-Caamaño http://calcifer.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
It is not a good thing when there are so few candidates that nearly all have to be elected. With just 8 candidates and a 7-member board, we are only voting about which single one of these candidate not to put on the board. That is getting pretty close to no choice at all. What would we do if there were only 7 candidates? If there were only 6? I propose changing the election rules for future elections so that if the number of candidates is less than 7/4 the size of the board, there will be another request for candidates, giving 5 days for people to step forward. If that squeezes the subsequent step, then expand it by moving all the previous dates 5 days earlier. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
Seems like a valid point. p.s. not saying the current candidates are not valid or worthy :) p.s.s. a valid point that this year we should continue as is. It isn't fair to the ones that have submitted their candidacy on time. -- Jared Jennings On Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Richard Stallman wrote: It is not a good thing when there are so few candidates that nearly all have to be elected. With just 8 candidates and a 7-member board, we are only voting about which single one of these candidate not to put on the board. That is getting pretty close to no choice at all. What would we do if there were only 7 candidates? If there were only 6? I propose changing the election rules for future elections so that if the number of candidates is less than 7/4 the size of the board, there will be another request for candidates, giving 5 days for people to step forward. If that squeezes the subsequent step, then expand it by moving all the previous dates 5 days earlier. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org (http://www.fsf.org) www.gnu.org (http://www.gnu.org) Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org (mailto:foundation-list@gnome.org) https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
Fully agreed Richard, these items are on the Membership Committee's agenda for the next meeting already. 2013/5/23 Richard Stallman r...@gnu.org It is not a good thing when there are so few candidates that nearly all have to be elected. With just 8 candidates and a 7-member board, we are only voting about which single one of these candidate not to put on the board. That is getting pretty close to no choice at all. What would we do if there were only 7 candidates? If there were only 6? I propose changing the election rules for future elections so that if the number of candidates is less than 7/4 the size of the board, there will be another request for candidates, giving 5 days for people to step forward. If that squeezes the subsequent step, then expand it by moving all the previous dates 5 days earlier. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Sysadmin, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
2013/5/22 Joanmarie Diggs jdi...@igalia.com On 05/21/2013 10:46 PM, Karen Sandler wrote: On Tue, May 21, 2013 1:14 pm, Richard Stallman wrote: The number of candidates so far is pretty small -- I saw only 8 -- so we will not have much choice in our voting. On general principles, and not as criticism of the people who have already stepped into the race, I think it would be good for more people to run. I encourage you, and everyone who has already run, to stay in the race. I am pleased to say that the candidates we already have are *all* exceptionally strong. I feel that I should point out that there are one or two people who would probably join the race as well if we extended the deadline. As I said, though, the current candidates are pretty awesome and they all got their announcements in on time :) True, but the announcement period this time was shorter. In 2012, the announcement went out 17 April with a deadline of 20 May. [1] This time, the announcement went out 6 May with a deadline of 19 May. [2] Given Richard's observation that we have a lack of choice combined with the shorter announcement period, I wonder if it would be worth extending the call for candidates for, say, another week. Yearly the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee has a meeting to decide when and how the elections should take place. It seems that both on the past [1] and the current year [2] the timeline for proposing candidacies was 13 days. Apparently on 2012 the Board didn't coordinate with the committee and decided to send out the announcement earlier on the 17th of April. While I agree we should send out the announcement a bit earlier the next year (maybe moving the Announcements and list of candidates opens to April?) I feel there's no real reason to postpone the last date for proposing new candidacies given the fact that no one expressed an interest in sending out a candidacy after the 20th of May neither publicly or privately to me or to any other member of the membership committee. 13 days is a good amount of time for thinking deeply about running or not and for writing a little sum up of what the candidate has achieved in term of contributions during the past months / years. -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Sysadmin, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Extending the call for candidates (was Re: Withdrawal of board of idrectors candidacy)
Forgot the links: [1] https://vote.gnome.org/2012/rules.html [2] https://vote.gnome.org/2013/rules.html 2013/5/22 Andrea Veri a...@gnome.org 2013/5/22 Joanmarie Diggs jdi...@igalia.com On 05/21/2013 10:46 PM, Karen Sandler wrote: On Tue, May 21, 2013 1:14 pm, Richard Stallman wrote: The number of candidates so far is pretty small -- I saw only 8 -- so we will not have much choice in our voting. On general principles, and not as criticism of the people who have already stepped into the race, I think it would be good for more people to run. I encourage you, and everyone who has already run, to stay in the race. I am pleased to say that the candidates we already have are *all* exceptionally strong. I feel that I should point out that there are one or two people who would probably join the race as well if we extended the deadline. As I said, though, the current candidates are pretty awesome and they all got their announcements in on time :) True, but the announcement period this time was shorter. In 2012, the announcement went out 17 April with a deadline of 20 May. [1] This time, the announcement went out 6 May with a deadline of 19 May. [2] Given Richard's observation that we have a lack of choice combined with the shorter announcement period, I wonder if it would be worth extending the call for candidates for, say, another week. Yearly the GNOME Foundation Membership Committee has a meeting to decide when and how the elections should take place. It seems that both on the past [1] and the current year [2] the timeline for proposing candidacies was 13 days. Apparently on 2012 the Board didn't coordinate with the committee and decided to send out the announcement earlier on the 17th of April. While I agree we should send out the announcement a bit earlier the next year (maybe moving the Announcements and list of candidates opens to April?) I feel there's no real reason to postpone the last date for proposing new candidacies given the fact that no one expressed an interest in sending out a candidacy after the 20th of May neither publicly or privately to me or to any other member of the membership committee. 13 days is a good amount of time for thinking deeply about running or not and for writing a little sum up of what the candidate has achieved in term of contributions during the past months / years. -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Sysadmin, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av -- Cheers, Andrea Debian Developer, Fedora / EPEL packager, GNOME Sysadmin, GNOME Foundation Membership Elections Committee Chairman Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/~av ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
