Re: scanning the openSUSE members

On Friday 02 October 2015 14:23:55 Richard Brown wrote:
> We've discussed this repeatedly on this list now

Yes, but it seems there is no consensus on the topic, so maybe we do need to 
discuss this further. To me this is important because it is about the core 
values of the project, about our openness, and about the question who we want 
to be part of the project and whom not.

> Membership is a key part of this projects governance, and the current
> situation where membership votes have a terrible turn out is not
> acceptable

Why is that not acceptable? The active people vote, the inactive don't. It 
makes sense to care about the number of active people. But what does the 
number of inactive members change? Nothing, because these are the inactive 
ones.

Note that this is a very different kind of governance than elections for a 
government or similar votes. A government decides for everybody, also for the 
people who didn't vote. There a strong legitimation by good participation does 
make a difference.

But for openSUSE, which is a volunteer project, and those who don't vote 
because they are not interested anymore are also not affected by the results 
of the votes, because they chose to not participate anymore. In such a 
situation the number of non-voters says nothing else than how much of a 
history the project had.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <cschum-l3A5Bk7waGM@public.gmane.org>
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