Re: scanning the openSUSE members

On 4 October 2015 at 02:03, Cornelius Schumacher <cschum-l3A5Bk7waGM@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Saturday 03 October 2015 08:56:20 Robert Schweikert wrote:
>>
>> I think this is a bit too simplistic. By casting a vote for the board
>> elections the voter has a certain influence on the direction of the
>> project, and we can argue about this as part of this discussion. Thus,
>> with a large number of inactive "openSUSE Members", per the member
>> definition, the problem arises is two fold.
>
> Voting for the board does not influence the direction of the project as by our
> guiding principles the board does not direct the project: "The board should
> provide guidance and support existing governance structures, but shouldn't
> direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish
> the goals of the project."
>
>> b.) If everyone votes then one can argue that those that are generally
>> inactive have an undue influence over the direction of the project by
>> casting their vote.
>
> Do you seriously think that this is a problem? Is there any evidence that
> people who do nothing than voting change the outcome of votes in any way?
>
> To me this sounds like a very theoretical argument.
>
>> The problem does not necessarily need to be solved by culling the
>> membership list. Other approaches may be feasible.
>
> Exactly. The other approach is to just let it be. It doesn't create real
> problems and our energy is much better spent on taking care of the active
> people and get things done in what we want to deliver to our users.
>
>> Anyway as Richard pointed out, a change in governance model needs a vote
>> by "openSUSE Members" which brings us back to the original problem. Of
>> course we can choose to change the governance model with the current
>> voting structure.
>
> There is no change in our governance structure needed.
>
> There is no quorum defined for board elections, so the number of inactive
> voters doesn't change the results of the election in any way.
>
> Additionally there are no rules defined for any other votes by the members.
> Our community is an informal one governed by the open source process, where
> consensus and decisions by those who do the work govern the project, not
> formal votes. It's simply not true that changes to the governance model need a
> vote. That's not how the openSUSE community is built.
>
> Our community is governed by doing, by communication, and by the values
> outlined in the guiding principles.
>
> The board would be well advised to follow its mandate to support the
> community, its values, and the structures which are there. There is no need
> for erecting formalities which are neither supposed to be there nor helpful.
> Better spend your time and energy on wholeheartedly supporting what the
> community does.
>
> And I'm sorry if this discussion drifts into the meta regions of discussing
> governance of the project. These discussions are harder to do productively and
> they can't easily be concluded compared to when you just can write a piece of
> code solving the problem. But they are important, as they help to create
> clarity about how the community is understanding its values. This is what
> guides how we work.
>
> --
> Cornelius Schumacher <cschum-l3A5Bk7waGM@public.gmane.org>

Cornelius,

While much of what you say is factually correct, I think your
interpretation of the status quo is lacking some context

Lets take for example the Boards started role - "The board should
provide guidance and support existing governance structures, but
shouldn't direct or control development, since community mechanisms
exist to accomplish the goals of the project."

This is something I think we all agree on. I am confident that every
Board member strongly believes that the Board should never take a
decision away from other contributors who wish to assert that
decision. But to extend that as far as you have when you state "voting
for the Board does not influence the direction of the Project"
couldn't be much further from the truth

Sure, in an idealistic utopia, we would have a Project where a) Every
volunteer felt empowered, confident, and capable of making decisions
and b) Every volunteer agreed with every other volunteer without
incident.

In reality, neither of those are true, and so we have the Board.

Dealing with a), there are many contributors to the Project who seek
for additional guidance on what they are doing, or seek a second
opinion to challenge or reinforce their own decision. These lists,
this community, is often where many of these discussions start, but,
as this discussion proves, very often a conclusion or consensus can be
unclear. This, if left undealt with, can lead to decision paralysis -
no decisions get made because no one can decide what decision needs to
be made. The Board, under its role to provide guidance and support, is
often turned to in such circumstances. The decisions we make there, in
how to guide and support those volunteers, have huge influence in the
Project. In the last 3 Boards, I have seen a steady increase on the
Board being turned to in this manner. We all saw it en mass with the
recent decision regarding the naming and numbering of Leap, where
there was clear direction from a majority of people involved in the
discussion that they felt the Board should decide, not a Member vote,
not a Community-wide vote.

And with b) conflict resolution, the Board is our stated conflict
resolution body. Conflicts arise all the time, and the decisions the
Board makes there in how to resolve those conflicts, also have a huge
influence on the direction of the Project. In the long ago past (ie.
3+ years ago), the Board used to avoid stepping in to help resolve
conflicts that were of a 'technical' nature. This led to some
significant problems, such as certain technical issues lingering
around without resolution. After discussing it on these lists the
Board decided to no longer excuse itself from such conflicts, and
while of course the goal is to always be a mediator and seek a
resolution to any issue that is led and agreed upon by the parties
involved, as a last resort this places the Board in a situation where
it could also make decisions which influence the technical direction
of the Project.

or to put this very succinctly - while remaining true to the
Principles upon which it was founded, the Board today is involved in
far more decisions and influence of the Project than the Boards when
those Principles were laid out

And is that a problem? I think not, but it leads to an interesting
constitutional question

Who keeps the Board in check?

The Board represents the Project, and is meant to be answerable to the
Members and the wider openSUSE community.
The Members represent the wider/fuller openSUSE community, and have a
direct lever of control over the Board, as our rules state "If 20 per
cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board, an election
will be held for the complete elected Board seats. "
With the current situation, where a significant number of the openSUSE
membership is inactive and not participating in the project in *any*
means, then it is significantly harder for those Members who ARE still
active in the project to reach that 20% threshold

For that reason, and that reason alone, I think the effort to conduct
a census on our existing Membership, and remove those who no longer
have any interest in the Project, is in the best interest of the
Board, the Members, and the whole Community - it's important to have a
healthy governance structure.

All the other topics around here are food for thought, context,
additional concerns, additional issues to consider in the future

If you look at the openSUSE governance structure, we're not that
dissimilar from many other projects

KDE e.V and the GNOME Foundation for example have Boards.
These boards are elected by a subset of their wider community, which
in both cases call themselves 'Members'.
These voting Members have eligibility requirements that require
contributions to the Project which are confirmed via a process not
dissimilar from ours at openSUSE.

I do not think departing from this model, and going to a direction
where everyone can vote on everything, would be a healthy option for
the Project - we want to ensure that openSUSE has a strong influence
in its own direction.
A totally open 'everyone can vote on everything in openSUSE even if
they have nothing to do with openSUSE' approach would be open to some
pretty negative manipulation from parties who might have reason to
misdirect the Project.

In fact, I think the sensible approach is to actually learn from those
other Projects who walk this path, and consider their solutions to our
shared problems

Both KDE eV and the GNOME Foundation have rules regarding quorums,
that sounds like a good idea for us too.
I really dislike the current situation where Member votes are often
felt to be not representative of the community, because so many of
those Members who are meant to represent the community are not voting
at all.
The perceived 'lack of interest and engagement' from the Membership
also discourages use of Member voting in areas where it COULD be
considered, such as in some of those decisions where the Board is
currently turned to. It would be nice to have a clear, vibrant, voting
Membership, which the community can turn to when making tricky
decisions.

Both KDE e.V and the GNOME Foundation have ongoing activity
requirements to maintain your membership - We could do with
establishing that, but right now however I think we should just focus
on this simple 'one shot' attempt of ensuring the current membership
represents those who are currently interested in the Project.
Let's figure out the lay of the land, and get our membership
rebalanced so we can see an accurate picture of how many active
Members we have, how many of them are voting on Board elections, and
then we can take things from there.

Regards,

Richard
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