Re: Reducing the board size
Hello all, I'd like to express my opinion. I've been following the messages and it seems clear why the solicitation to reduce the board it's been talking But I can't understand why this has to be chosen for the next election. I see that, as said before, if there was a clear definition of the actions and contributions expected for the members of the board we would know for sure that what really turns harder the board course if the inefficiency is a problem or if is the number of people or the missing engagement of some. With the actions clearly defined and a better accompaniment of the works that are being made in this question won't happen the risk of having in mind only the last contributions or the actions missed by some members. Who doesn't make part of the board would know what is happening and who is guaranteing that things are being done. I vote NO because I really believe that if the actions were better distributed we could have in another election the certain that we won't be keeping out interested people and it will be more sure if is needed the reduction or not. Regards, Izabel Valverde GNOME Brazil ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
quote who=Davyd Madeley This is only because the purpose of the board is badly defined and communicated. I think it is worth pointing out, that if the role of the board is better defined in the future and if the board is fixed, there is no reason that the number of directors can not be increased again. Like with everything else, the board, its role and its size should evolve based on the needs of the project. It has taken 3 years to go from idea to possible execution to reduce the size of the board. I very strongly believe it's the wrong thing to do, so this doesn't sound like a very good way of doing things at all to me. :-) - Jeff -- OSDC 2005: Melbourne, Australia http://www.osdc.com.au/ Well, the English don't have any experience with terrorism... - Fox News on London Blasts ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
quote who=Vincent Untz I've heard lots of unconvincing arguments as well--on both sides. But, what is very convincing to me is the fact that it strongly appears that we don't have 11 motivated people running for the board. Motivated to do what? To get things done? That should not be the function of the board. If you mean motivated to represent the GNOME community and the Foundation membership in the administration of the organisation, as in, people who we trust to do the right thing... I think that's wrong. We've had very motivated people, to the point where some of them have run to make sure less trustworthy people would not get on the board! :-) I forgot to ask. Jeff, what do you mean with represent the GNOME community and...? Can you give us some examples? Great question, thanks. * When someone asks for an opinion from the GNOME community, they usually go to the board. We need people on the board who we trust to answer these fairly, accurately, and without bias. * When there is a major division in the community, we need people on the board we trust to mediate. * When the organisation makes a significant investment of resources (such as taking on an employee, funding a conference, sponsoring travel for GNOME community members), we need people we trust to decide a course of action that is positive for our community. Those are only a few of the examples, but these are the kinds of things that matter for our board, not day-to-day muck. :-) - Jeff -- Ubuntu USA Europe Tour: Oct-Nov 2005http://wiki.ubuntu.com/3BT You know a French woman is faking it when she screams, I would like the table near the window please! ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Hi, So, it's been over 10 days since the start of the thread, and I just wanted to make sure we hadn't forgotten about it. There were clearly mixed opinions on this. There were 6 or 7 people in favour of reducing the size, 6 or 7 people in favour of leaving it as is or not reducing it. There certainly seems to be enough difference of opinion on this to merit putting it to the foundation membership. I would like to propose, then, that the referendum take place in October (to allow the vote to happen before the next board elections). I would like to board to ratify this, and ask the election committee to put the wheels in motion at our next board meeting on Wednesday. Cheers, Dave. David Neary wrote: Hi all, There has been some discussion on reducing the board size on the board, and the one point which is clear is that this discussion should be in public. I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us have a referendum on the issue next month. The board has huge problems being pro-active. Any issue which is slightly contentious has an opposition in a board of 11 people. It's inevitable. And when there is opposition, there are many voices, and when there are many voices, there is no resolution. With 7 people, this problem will be reduced (not removed, I'm not that naive). In addition, a fringe benefit is that people who will want to get elected will have to run. With 11 seats, no-one runs for election. There is essentially only competition for the last 3 seats. I would like to see board elections have an election campaign, with people saying what they want to do, why, and saying why they think other people's approach will not be effective. There are potential down-sides. If you look at the most effective board members over the years, they have typically not been among the 7 most popular. I myself would not have been elected this year. But there is no denying that the board structure as it is is fundamentally flawed. I think this is one step towards improving it. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lyon, France ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Hi Dave, Today at 15:26, David Neary wrote: I would like to propose, then, that the referendum take place in October (to allow the vote to happen before the next board elections). I would like to board to ratify this, and ask the election committee to put the wheels in motion at our next board meeting on Wednesday. I don't think we've seen enough campaigning from those in favour of the change. I.e. it is my opinion that most of those who don't care, don't want board size to be reduced, or are unable to judge based on the available data (this includes myself), simply didn't take part in the discussion. As with many changes, I think the foundation membership would be confronted with a question unable to answer (including board elections, as has been pointed out previously, since we commonly vote based on technical merits). And this leads to low turn-out. At least, that's how I feel: I simply do not know if reducing the board size is going to help anything or not, and if it is, I am not seeing what exactly (yes, I've seen mentions about only couple of board members being active, I've seen arguments about simplifying decision making, etc. but I've also seen counter-arguments, and truth be told, none of them seemed strong enough). As it is, such a referendum would end up being NOT VOTING for me, because I don't feel strongly about it either way. And I hope I should feel strongly about it. Cheers, Danilo ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
On Sun, Sep 18, 2005 at 11:52:41PM +0200, Anne Østergaard wrote: Points of importance for the future of the Foundation should not be decided with 6 votes in favour and 5 against. For the record, such a situation never happened in the past. There have been issues where there was a relatively clear split between two group of divergent opinions, but in those case the resolution wasn't to vote, usually a middle way has been attempted, or (for good or bad) the issue has stalled and no decision was done. For the sake of transparency I will also say that the management of the foundation only employee, our Director Tim Ney, has been the only recurring issue over the years leading to this situation. As a secretary this is a very hard issue, because when this happen I am always blocked between the two conflicting problem of trying to function as openly as possible and the obvious privacy issue that our employee deserves. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Dave Neary wrote: By the way, I'm having trouble taking this mail as anything other than a personal attack... ... Dave, for what it's worth I thought Anne raised very valid points here, and I took the message outside of any personal context. I agree with a lot of what Anne said (not knowing any of the history that might by behind those comments). Bill If you're going to make thinly veiled attacks on people, the least you can do is take off the veil and say what you mean. Cheers, Dave. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Hi Anne, I added some comments below. Le dimanche 18 septembre 2005 à 23:52 +0200, Anne Østergaard a écrit : By the way does the board have an agenda for each meeting? I have never seen one! I miss this tool. I believe so (although I'm not on the board ;-)). The agenda is probably only sent to the board members. [...] I find it important that persons stick to the areas of there special expertise. If this is developing code maybe they should concentrate on this- and leave some things to people with expertise in other matters- where they are the best suited. (One does not have to have or air an opinion on every single matter- or for that matter sit and control the work of the others all the time. Marketing, conference planning and fund raising are quite different from writing code.) Being good at coding does not necessarily mean that these same persons who write code or fix bugs are good at community building, organisation, marketing, fund raising etc. or even at giving presentations- please leave these functions to those who are. You do not need to go bug hunting in these areas - please use this skill to code and its functionalities. Trust that others that are asked and invited to be in on a certain project are capable of doing what they are asked to do- until otherwise pr oven. I can't believe I'm reading this. Are you saying that coders can't be good enough to be on the board, build a community, etc.? There are a lot of coders out there that know they're not good at this or that they won't be able to help and this is why they're not running for the board. If a coder thinks he/she can do something good while being at the board, he/she should definitely be a candidate for the board. [...] I also do not think that the board should carry out all the work themselves. And I don't think the board wants to carry all the work. There are already some teams who are doing some work delegated by the board (the too often forgotten membership elections committee, e.g., but also marketing people, GUADEC organization, etc.). I also had the impression that the board wants to delegate even more... If GNOME Foundation had been a private company I would have asked for a re-election of the board after the last Foundation Member Meeting during GUADEC in Stuttgart where there seemed to be 10 members of the board present representing some 14 different opinions. Why didn't you raise your concerns on foundation-list? I believe it might have interested the members. Also, I really have the impression that we don't have all the same expectations from the Foundation. As for me, the Foundation exists for GNOME and GNOME people. When I read what you're writing, for some reasons, I have the impression that you want the Foundation to be something a lot bigger (I might be wrong, of course). Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Le lundi 19 septembre 2005 à 14:16 +0200, Dave Neary a écrit : Do you feel that you better represent the community's interests when planning conferences or building teams, Or doing marketing? I'm not answering the question since I'm unaware of the context. I just want to highlight the represent the community's interests expression. This is really why the Foundation exists, IMHO. Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 07:00:30PM -0400, Luis Villa wrote: On 9/14/05, Daniel Veillard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 09:01:38PM +0200, David Neary wrote: I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us have a referendum on the issue next month. The board has huge problems being pro-active. Any issue which is slightly contentious has an opposition in a board of 11 people. It's inevitable. And when there is opposition, there are many voices, and when there are many voices, there is no resolution. My experience is rather that all board members are busy members of the community, so getting people do do things is hard. If you get 7 persons instead of 11 you reduce also the amount of available time from board members. People running for the board will need more time upfront to fullfill their board member requirements. I have not had time to review the records, but I'm pretty sure that at least two board members have taken zero action items all year, and a I'm one of them, my participation has been limited to providing minutes, and I entierely agree it's not a satisfactory situation. couple have taken very few, and that this has been fairly consistent every year I've been on the board (though it has been different people each year, that's just how it is.) So at least in an average year you could cut the board down to seven people with very, very little impact on the amount of work done. Assuming you're lucky to get only the motivated people left in the set of 7. This is taking risks I think. In addition, as Dave mentioned, I think that cutting down the number of people would increase actual campaigning, which is, I think a good thing. Amount of time available for board work would certainly be something that people might campaign on- certainly, I'd be less likely to vote for someone who I know is very busy, so we might actually get (gasp) selection of the board, instead of the current 'virtually whoever self-nominates gets in' situation, which I think is damaging to the ability of the board to function as a coherent, motivated unit. This could work both ways, individual conflicts impact is reduced in a larger group too. Finally, I'd suggest that it is also quite possible that a board with fewer people might more actively seek out and charter new teams more actively, instead of 'hoarding' some of the work. A board that did less work itself and did more to distribute work would both need less time and (I think) be more effective in the work it did do. My analysis is that we have trouble at the execution level. Reducing the group size is advocated as a way to fix this, I have doubts about it, I don't think this will solve the problem , but I don't have any other proposal, so I won't object anymore. Having a referendum about this is just fine from my viewpoint. Daniel -- Daniel Veillard | Red Hat Desktop team http://redhat.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] | libxml GNOME XML XSLT toolkit http://xmlsoft.org/ http://veillard.com/ | Rpmfind RPM search engine http://rpmfind.net/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 22:53 +1200, Glynn Foster wrote: On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 08:20 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote: I'm also in favour of reducing the board size to 7. It recognizes the reality of how we work. That way of working is very good for lots of other parts of GNOME, but the board is fundamentally meant to be decisive. Me too. For the 2 years I sat on the board, I think having fewer people would definitely have been a good thing. I can't count the number of times we've all more or less agreed, but no one was willing to step in and take responsibility for seeing it through. Reducing the numbers will ultimately help that I believe. In my opinion it is not the size of the board that is the problem- nor is it the by- laws. They have foreseen a normal voting procedure where is is not clear that everybody are in agreement. The problem in my view is the decision making process on the board. A certain subject should ideally be prepared by a sub- committee or group of persons appointed by the board, then send out in a hearing procedure on the Foundation-List to get a picture of the opinions and view points of the members. Then when the limited hearing period is over the matter should be put on the agenda for the next board meeting in order for the board to conclude and make it's decision. By the way does the board have an agenda for each meeting? I have never seen one! I miss this tool. Only doing Action point's are suggesting that only the board members are expected to do the work themselves. This does not give other Foundation members much chance to give a helping hand if they want to and have the expertise. Points of importance for the future of the Foundation should not be decided with 6 votes in favour and 5 against. I think we should leave the number of board members as it is for now. The size of the board is very important because there will be less room for variety and representation of persons with different kinds of skills- if we decide to reduce the size of the board. People with too much time on there hands could be dangerous to the community and to the future and the direction of the GNOME Foundation, as they tend to think that there personal opinion is important on all matters and every tiny detail. (We have seen the same four board members express there opinions time and time again. This does not mean that others agree with the guys that writes the most- but it tells us that there are a lack of regular voting going on during board meetings. This gives outsiders the impression that the ship is sailing without a proper direction. It is not good for a successful and growing organisation like GNOME. I find it important that persons stick to the areas of there special expertise. If this is developing code maybe they should concentrate on this- and leave some things to people with expertise in other matters- where they are the best suited. (One does not have to have or air an opinion on every single matter- or for that matter sit and control the work of the others all the time. Marketing, conference planning and fund raising are quite different from writing code.) Being good at coding does not necessarily mean that these same persons who write code or fix bugs are good at community building, organisation, marketing, fund raising etc. or even at giving presentations- please leave these functions to those who are. You do not need to go bug hunting in these areas - please use this skill to code and its functionalities. Trust that others that are asked and invited to be in on a certain project are capable of doing what they are asked to do- until otherwise pr oven. About the consensus principle: It also seems to me that people have different definitions of the consensus principle. Some people think that this mean unanimously decisions, and that one person can block a decision. Also in the past I have been missing a record of the actual votes - if there has been any on the board? In order to be able to judge if one would like to re- elect a specific member to sit on the next board - I would like to see who voted in favour and who voted against and who abstained- every time there has been a vote on the board. What we need is more transparency. Board members should take responsibility for there actions. I also do not think that the board should carry out all the work themselves. It would be nice if the board consisted of experienced persons with knowledge of how to do fund raising for important tasks and projects and travel assistance when needed. I would like to see board members with experience from board work in business or other normal organisations. If GNOME Foundation had been a private company I would have asked for a re-election of the board after the last Foundation Member Meeting during GUADEC in Stuttgart where there seemed to be 10 members of the board present representing some 14 different opinions. In which direction shall the mother ship sail???
Re: Reducing the board size
On 9/15/05, Richard M. Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It sounds like increasing the size of the board by 3 people could achieve both of the goals that Dave was talking about: to get more things done, and to have more contested seats **(provided enough people decide to run so as to make a real contest).** [Emphasis mine] This last is the true problem. I know that in each of the past two years there have been at least two candidates each year (and more last year) who placed their name in nomination only because they felt it would be embarassing if there were fewer nominees than seats on the board, and/or because they felt the 'last' nominee would be a very poor representative on the board. I certainly found myself in this category last year. To put it another way, in the current system, we're *electing* people every year whose primary qualification is that they self-nominated and are not completely unknown. We've not had an election in two years where fewer than 1/2 of the candidates were elected, and in that year, 11 of 23 were selected. So instead of focusing on picking the most qualified, we're focusing on disqualifying the handful of least qualified. That's a terrible way of picking a quality board that can work well together and get things done. If we picked a smaller number of candidates, we'd have actual competition based on criteria like time available, views on issues facing the board, etc., and I think that would be very healthy for the board. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Murray Cumming wrote:... The fact that we are considering a referendum for this, even though it's not strictly necessary, proves that we have difficulty reaching consensus on stuff that can move us forward. I disagree; this is the sort of important decision that IMO should require a referendum. Bill ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Hi, I +1 holding a referendum on this. Christian On Wed, 2005-09-14 at 21:01 +0200, David Neary wrote: Hi all, There has been some discussion on reducing the board size on the board, and the one point which is clear is that this discussion should be in public. I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us have a referendum on the issue next month. The board has huge problems being pro-active. Any issue which is slightly contentious has an opposition in a board of 11 people. It's inevitable. And when there is opposition, there are many voices, and when there are many voices, there is no resolution. With 7 people, this problem will be reduced (not removed, I'm not that naive). In addition, a fringe benefit is that people who will want to get elected will have to run. With 11 seats, no-one runs for election. There is essentially only competition for the last 3 seats. I would like to see board elections have an election campaign, with people saying what they want to do, why, and saying why they think other people's approach will not be effective. There are potential down-sides. If you look at the most effective board members over the years, they have typically not been among the 7 most popular. I myself would not have been elected this year. But there is no denying that the board structure as it is is fundamentally flawed. I think this is one step towards improving it. Cheers, Dave. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
On Wed, 2005-09-14 at 21:01 +0200, David Neary wrote: Hi all, There has been some discussion on reducing the board size on the board, and the one point which is clear is that this discussion should be in public. I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us have a referendum on the issue next month. The board has huge problems being pro-active. Any issue which is slightly contentious has an opposition in a board of 11 people. It's inevitable. And when there is opposition, there are many voices, and when there are many voices, there is no resolution. I think cutting the board size by more that one third at once might be too drastic and the consequences not easily foreseeable. An intermediate reduction to 9 would be more reasonable if cut at all. -JP -- JP Rosevear [EMAIL PROTECTED] Novell, Inc. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
It sounds like increasing the size of the board by 3 people could achieve both of the goals that Dave was talking about: to get more things done, and to have more contested seats (provided enough people decide to run so as to make a real contest). ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Hi Dave, Le mercredi 14 septembre 2005 à 21:01 +0200, David Neary a écrit : Hi all, There has been some discussion on reducing the board size on the board, and the one point which is clear is that this discussion should be in public. I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us have a referendum on the issue next month. Just asking for a clarification: does the board want a referendum? Or is it only some of the board members and no decision has been taken yet? Cheers, Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Tim Ney, GNOME Foundation wrote: On Wed, 2005-09-14 at 21:22 +0200, Vincent Untz wrote: Le mercredi 14 septembre 2005 à 21:01 +0200, David Neary a écrit : I'm in favour of reducing the board to 7 people. I would like to see us have a referendum on the issue next month. Just asking for a clarification: does the board want a referendum? Or is it only some of the board members and no decision has been taken yet? There was discussion among the board members at today's meeting, but no vote or consensus on the issue other than suggesting Dave bring the debate to foundation-list. That said, there were no opposing voices to holding a referendum, and many absentees today. The reservation was that holding a referendum would be a waste of time if there were no reason to reduce the size. In answer to Vincent's question - I'm bringing it up as an individual. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lyon, France ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Reducing the board size
Leslie Proctor wrote: My experience is rather that all board members are busy members of the community, so getting people do do things is hard. If you get 7 persons instead of 11 you reduce also the amount of available time from board members. People running for the board will need more time upfront to fullfill their board member requirements. Daniel I'm with Daniel on this. This will decrease the effectiveness of the board, not increase it. I agree; the fact that the people with the most votes don't necessarily have the most time to contribute undermines the whole 7 is more effective position. I also don't agree that 11 is too many; maybe 15 or 18 would be too many for consensus, but I think that if one of 11 elected members feels so strongly that they will block consensus, maybe it would be just as inappropriate for a smaller Board to make such a decision on behalf of the Foundation. Bill ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
