Fedora Board election results

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 24.06.2008 21:39, Michael Schwendt wrote:
 >
>> Which is why you ask the community, at large, "Why didn't you vote?"

Some of the reasons (IMHO of course):

- the base of active contributes that really want to be involved is a 
lot smaller then the total numbers

- those permitted to vote didn't get a direct information (e.g. a direct 
mail straight to their inbox (or was there one and I forgot about 
it/missed it?)); only those that follow planet or some of the mailing 
lists were aware that a election was in progress (which might be a good 
thing as I#d consider only those people as active in Fedora; but that's 
a different topic).

> I almost decided not to vote this time, because in the list of eight
> nominees I didn't see any real community representatives.

[lot's of good point to most of whom I partly or totally agree to 
snipped, as they are already being discussed]

> In the end I voted, but used only a small fraction of my voting points.
> A bit like participation and boycott at the same time.

I actually in the beginning also didn't know if it was worth voting or 
not. In the end I gave most points to the spare time contributes and 
gave nearly none to the others. It's not that I think the Red Hat people 
do a worse job than the others; in fact I suppose it's even the opposite 
in some of the cases. But I actually feared a bit that the result of the 
election might look like the outcome we have now.


To explain that a bit more: those elected are much present in the Fedora 
Project (lists, development work, ...).  If you are a Fedora contributor 
then chances are high that you had to deal with them or at least heard 
of them a few times. So when it comes to an election like this people 
just vote for those nominees they know of/were in contact with. That's 
how humans afaics vote.

But three of those four elected are Red Hat employees for whom working 
and contributing to Fedora is part of their job (afaik; but is it the 
case for Seth? not completely sure, sorry. But he is well known in 
Fedora though Yum, so that might be and important factor); the fourth is 
mainly working in another area of Red Hat. The only spare time 
contributor that was elected was *quite active* on the 
lists/planet/board in the past months and with his special way/humor 
easy to remember for people -- those are the things that likely helped a 
lot in this election afaics.


So one might say it were the right people that got elected -- the 
nominees that at least from a quick look were the most active one the 
recent months in Fedora.

But on the other hand the those three Red Hat employees that got elected 
had a big advantage: they did a lot (not all!) of their Fedora work 
during their work time. That's not right or wrong, it's just the way it 
is afaics.

Which brings me to the point: Maybe doing public elections to form the 
Board is not the right thing to do as Red Hat employees that work on 
Fedora have a big advantage accidentally. Maybe other way are better 
then a election. Or we need something like the gnome board style: limit 
the maximum numbers of people from one company (whatever company that is).

Just my 2 cent.

Cu
knurd