Board Composition Proposal

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 02:08:09PM -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 1:47 PM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Getting more people to run is one of the reasons I want to do this. I
> > do not believe Toshio is the only person choosing to not run because
> > of the current structure .
> 
> Remind me again... who is Toshio's employer?
> 
> And I'm really not sure its appropriate to make significant governance
> changes on the _belief_ that a significant group of  qualified
> _external_ volunteers are withholding candidacy based on the existence
> of a minority of appointed board seats.  Do you _know_? Lets get
> people on record and be _sure_ we know why people aren't running
> before we project our own feelings about governance onto the
> situation.
> 
> I'll tell you why I haven't run again as an external volunteer... my
> job status changed and I'm doing significantly more travelling to far
> flung places on the planet with diminished ethernet capacity.  And as
> a result of that lifestyle change I cannot in good concious run for an
> elected position which would require attentiveness. As much as I'd
> love to be part of a phone meeting while in McMurdo Station just to
> waste the satellite bandwidth, its not appropriate use of US tax
> dollars.
> 
> I personally have zero issue with having 4 appointed seats, 2 rotating
> out with each election period.  I personally have zero issue with the
> FPL having veto power. But I do have an issue with the assumption that
> more elected seats automatically means more external members being
> voted in.  Right now we have more externals eligible to vote and to
> run for seats and yet we are consistently voting in Red Hatters at a
> higher proportion that would be expected by their percentage of
> membership in the voting contributor base. You need to understand that
> this means that as we add more elected seats the probabilities are
> such that we are going to continue to vote in more Red Hat people as
> seats open up.  If they goals are to increase external participation
> in governance more elected seats is not a clear way forward on that
> goal.
> 
> Be clear about the goals... and pick implementations that strive to
> achieve those goals and are informed by the data we have in hand. What
> I fear is happening here is that there are a lot of unfounded
> assumptions being made about elected positions being intrinsically
> better than appointed positions and I take issue with that.  I've seen
> no reasoned argument so far set forward that would suggest to me that
> moving to more elected seats is a way forward to mitigate any
> particular concern.
> 
On the goals front, note that I didn't (and I don't think that inode0 did but
could be wrong) phrase this as Red Hat vs external.  I phrased it as agrees
with FPL agenda vs not.  If the FPL believes that the colour of the bikeshed
should be puce and uses his appointments to put people on the Board who
believe that as well, it's going to be very difficult to get orange approved
as the colour as you have to have those in favour of orange win every single
elected seat over two election cycles.  From the FPL's viewpoint, if they
want the colour of the bikeshed to be puce, it's very easy to do so as they
only need to get one elected member to agree with their choice in colour.

There is still the open question, though -- is it good or bad that the FPL
wields this much power?  While I might not personally want to work on a Board
that I'm just going to be at odds with, maybe that's fine.  The project
lasts longer than any given FPL... How much damage can an FPL do in the time
that they're in that role?  How much more good can they do by being able to
surround themselves with other Board members that are able to see the same
vision as they do?  Even if more of the Board positions were elective, would
the electorate be able to vote in people who countered the FPL's vision or
would the electorate simply vote in a mixture of people from all sides of
the equation?

-Toshio
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