We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 19:58 UTC (Sun) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642)
In reply to: We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public by kleptog
Parent article: OSI election ends with unsatisfying results

kleptog said “Once you are part of the executive (the cabinet) then they speak as one voice. And that means supporting any decision in public”

In USA nonprofit orgs, the Executive/cabinet is the Executive Director and their staff. The Board of Directors is more akin to the legislature, and I know in parliamentary systems, in fact the legislature regularly engages with the Executive to hold them accountable. That said, the analogy is just poor — the governance models are just too different to really compare.

We all know OSI elections are advisory-only, but the true advice given via electoral ballots should be public

Posted Mar 23, 2025 22:24 UTC (Sun) by rfontana (subscriber, #52677) [Link]

> That said, the analogy is just poor — the governance models are just too different to really compare.

This is somewhat similar to a point I was making on the OSI forum when people defended the "support publicly" clause as being similar to so-called "disagree and commit" philosophies that were in place at, reportedly, Sun Microsystems and Intel. If indeed some Silicon Valley tech companies adopted a "disagree and commit" policy regarding *employees*, that doesn't mean (a) it was a good idea, (b) it worked well, (c) it is appropriate to apply to nonprofit organizations, or (d) it is appropriately applied to *board* governance as opposed to management of employees.