Open Letter: Why I, Kevin Kofler, am not rerunning for FESCo

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>> As I have pointed out in both public and private emails to you
> [snip]
>
> Why are you telling all this stuff to me? I'm ALREADY complaining about our
> processes being undemocratic. The points you make are very real. But I don't
> agree with you that the solution has to be some formal framework. If our
> representatives actually, well, REPRESENTED their electorate, things would
> work much better. Now of course none of the representatives knows who voted
> for them because the vote is anonymous, but as you explained, there are
> reasons to represent even those who did not vote for oneself, or at all,
> anyway.

I have been telling you because I had hoped you would listen and
realize you were not just tilting at windmills but the wrong ones.
However it is clear to me that I am not able to communicate with you
or understand what you are trying to represent. After a year of
posting, all I can make out is some sort of quest towards some sort of
Anarchy/Anti-statist government in a place where it has little
possibility of occurring.

> In some cases, the people to represent are even our users, e.g. they asked
> for "adventurous" updates, so why does the Board decide on a "vision" for
> conservative updates? Are people that set on their personal preference that
> they can't see that our users want something different?

When less than 50% of the population votes, everyone can claim they
represent the silent majority. And no, a set of emails to a mailing
list does not make you non-silent. Hard work and continual effort is
what counts in the long run. So in the end, elected members have to
vote what they see best. If those views are not what the 'majority'
believes to be right they will be voted out.





-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
“The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.""
— Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines