Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes [LWN.net]

Linux Foundation leader Jim Zemlin explains the recent changes in the organization's by-laws. "First, The Linux Foundation Board structure has not changed. The same individuals remain as directors, and the same ratio of corporate to community directors continues as well. What we did do was to act on a long-discussed perception that the value we provide to individual supporters could be improved, for the first time in a decade. And that the process for recruiting community directors should be changed to be in line with other leading organizations in our community and industry." He also speaks out against the personal attacks that have appeared in conversations about this change.

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Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 14:42 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (1 responses)

Nice to see some "class" from Zemlin on the topic of community behaviour.

Now all we need is some focus on why various member companies of the Linux Foundation seem to routinely violate the licensing of the work featured in the foundation's own name, and why an organisation supposedly acting in the interests of that work does little or nothing obvious in public about it.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 26, 2016 21:59 UTC (Tue) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

Yeah, he dodged the question really well.

I find it frustrating that the zealots who managed to derail the conversation about the LF getting rid of community representation into a gender-based discussion essentially gave Jim a great way of 'addressing' the situation without saying anything material on the matter. How it is even remotely relevant whether a lawyer who's part of a lawsuit against one of the members of the Linux Foundation AND is potentially running for the board has a dick or not escapes me entirely but Jim obviously jumped on the opportunity it gave him to talk about what would otherwise have been an important topic. I wasn't even aware of this part of the conversation until he brought it up (and I'd rather continued to be oblivious of it, I'm ashamed enough as it is for my community's (foss') behavior towards minorities).

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 15:46 UTC (Fri) by pheldens (guest, #19366) [Link] (12 responses)

It's good they kept the social justice warriors out.

http://voxday.blogspot.nl/2016/01/no-sjws-allowed.html

Attacks on PHP and Ruby pending.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 15:58 UTC (Fri) by andrewsh (subscriber, #71043) [Link] (6 responses)

By which you mean what exactly?

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 16:07 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

The citation of a blog post by that man provides enough evidence that pheldens is not really worth listening to. (And said blog post provides, as usual, evidence of stunning levels of ignorance regarding the LF, the influence Linus has over it, Linus's stated position on women's rights, and oh hell everything else ever. But that's not surprising: the poster's principal domain of knowledge is in the fine art of being horrible to people for not acknowledging his manifest greatness and stirring up mud. I note that 'changing the rules to keep them out' is something his father attempted, too, only he was trying to keep out the taxman.)

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 25, 2016 8:23 UTC (Mon) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link]

Thanks, nix (and indirectly pheldens) for calling attention to that.

Usually the mention "sjw" is enough for my internal spam filter to kick in, but thanks to nix, I followed the links.

Wow. What a sordid, sad existence. I'm an old guy myself, and somehow thought we've left Freud's century and its castration anxieties. Just wow.

Learnt something new. Disturbing, admittedly.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 31, 2016 9:28 UTC (Sun) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link] (3 responses)

Not read the blog post, have no idea who "that man" is, but:

<blockquote>
The citation of a blog post by that man provides enough evidence that pheldens is not really worth listening to.
</blockquote>

could be used in a textbook as a classic example of the genetic fallacy.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Feb 10, 2016 20:09 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, except that he's approvingly citing a blog post by someone who believes that women should be denied the vote, who advocates the extermination of the populations of entire continents (seriously!)... this provides evidence that either the OP has done astonishingly little research (reading the comments on that post or looking at any surrounding posts would suffice) or that he thinks positions such as Theodore Beale holds to be unexceptionable.

Both positions are damning.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Feb 10, 2016 20:46 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (1 responses)

You're still using a fallacy. A couple of them, even.

Other beliefs held don't show anything about the particular subject being discussed. Someone can be wrong about ten things but still right about five others.

The other fallacy is that because you don't like the results of a particular argument that the logic is wrong. For example "women should be denied the vote" is probably (I haven't read his argument) the result of some facts and logic. Just saying that you don't like the end-result of his argument doesn't invalidate it. You'd have to actually find the flaw in it.

And not related to fallacies, I often find that arguments with crazy results are what happens when someone very smart and clever is messing around with you, such as the quite logical sounding "proof" that 1+1=3, for large enough values of 1.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Mar 2, 2016 14:06 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Honestly, a five second google would show you the blog posts in which "Vox Day" endeavours to show why women should be denied the vote (I don't recommend reading them, they leave a foul taste in your mouth). His argument is not based on logical reasoning or facts of any sort (no, I'm not linking to the guy, nor am I reiterating his "arguments", they're too unpleasant to type in and I don't want to inflict them on anyone else here). His extreme racism and eliminationism seems unlikely to be based on logic either, but frankly I couldn't get into reading those without hearing my ancestors metaphorically screaming at me so I had to stop.

This is not someone who thrives on rational argumentation. His blog is, alas, publically visible, so you're welcome to confirm that by reading it. I don't plan to, not any more.

(And the expressed opinions of and beliefs held by an individual *do* very much show the likelihood of correctness of further opinions and beliefs. The single largest predictor that a person will believe in any given conspiracy theory is whether they believe in other conspiracy theories. This is even true for mutually contradictory ones, such as that Elvis was killed by the CIA and that Elvis is still alive. Vox Day's expressed opinions and beliefs are repugnant and based on fear, hatred, and a desire for self-aggrandizement[1]: that strongly suggests that any statement he makes should be considered wrong or at the very least self-serving unless multiply confirmed by other sources.)

[1] honestly, this is someone who set up a slate for the Hugo Awards nominations last year and put *himself* on it multiple times, and filled up the remaining slots with people published by his tiny publishing house. "Shameless" doesn't even *begin* to cover it.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 16:19 UTC (Fri) by amk (subscriber, #19) [Link]

I will save dmarti the trouble and re-post a comment of his on the previous news items on this topic.

==============

It's somewhat hard to find, but there is an LWN comment filtering feature.

Go to
https://lwn.net/MyAccount/

Scroll down to the "Comment filtering" section and click "Edit filtering", then make with the "Add user to filters" form.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 0:55 UTC (Wed) by weaselkeeper (guest, #74881) [Link] (3 responses)

The antics of the SJWs are getting annoying. Coding is about coding, not what genetalia you have, or how well or poorly you tan.

Show me the code should be the only criteria.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 8:33 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

Show me the code should be the only criteria.

I don't think anyone disagrees that code incorporated into the Linux kernel (or other important open-source software product) should meet certain quality standards.

However, people who can actually code to those standards don't tend to fall fully-formed out of the sky. There are loads of work to be done, and there is a huge untapped reservoir of people who are, in principle, willing to contribute but can't be bothered, for reasons like the toxic atmosphere they're likely to encounter in case their contributions might be found sub-standard (whether they actually are or not). With appropriate training and mentoring, many of these people could become productive members of the open-source development community, and we all win.

There are people like Karen Sandler who are part of the effort to establish and promote initiatives that provide such training and mentoring to various groups of folks. This effort should be commended. Defaming such people as “SJWs” doesn't help anyone except the egos of those doing the defamation.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 17:56 UTC (Wed) by weaselkeeper (guest, #74881) [Link] (1 responses)

I agree we shouldn't encourage toxicity in a project. Especially toxic witch hunts like the one that occured in the opal project recently.
Criticising someone's code, isn't toxicity. It's quality control. Dragging in behaviour from outside the project is inappropriate.

The term SJW was self applied, it wasn't created by others, it was created by the ones who applied it to themselves. That their behaviour made it a label of derision, is no ones fault but theirs.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 28, 2016 9:21 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Criticising someone's code, isn't toxicity. It's quality control.

That's certainly one way of looking at it. But there is – abstractly speaking – still a difference between “Your code sucks dead hamsters through a straw. Go away.” and “That's not bad – if you changed this-and-such like this, that would play better with so-and-so, and your code would be more useful.” It seems that there are people who enjoy the former style of interaction a lot more than the latter, and that contributes to the toxicity issue.

In any case, making efforts to provide the latter style of interaction in order to encourage contributors who would be turned away by the former increases the chances of their creating good and usable code in the future. If somebody decides to raise money and use it fund this sort of endeavour in order to increase the level of participation on the part of minorities (in the open-source development community) such as women, developers from third-world countries, or for that matter left-handed people, that is their prerogative and should be viewed favourably in the broader context of ensuring a higher level of good-quality code submissions in the future.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 18:11 UTC (Fri) by piotrjurkiewicz (guest, #96438) [Link] (18 responses)

>I encourage those of you from our community who participate in social media conversations to fight back against the personal, and often sexist, attacks

How the hell pointing out that Karen Sandler established a sexist (selecting candidates basing on their sex instead only-merit factors) stipend program in Gnome is... sexist?! What a manipulation and twisting around!

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 22:18 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (17 responses)

I really wish you people would go away and spend your time posting at slashdot or some other website. You posts aren't welcome here and I dare say most of the userbase filtered you and your companions in the last thread. Not only that but the editorial staff asked you to stop posting this garbage and you've ignored that request.

The audience of this website is not interested in what you have to say, please go find a site with like minded individuals and stay there.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 0:41 UTC (Sat) by gnomefu (guest, #106490) [Link] (8 responses)

Sandler was bought up in the previous thread as a 'victim' of those nasty corporate misogynists at the Linux Foundation. In an attempt to smear the LF and Linux in general.

It was only after the nasty smear campaign was exposed and the story got no traction that the cries of 'victim hood' commenced from the same group to try and cover there tracks.

You have no right to tell anyone who should and should not post here or anywhere else. It is You who should scurry off to some private in-group 'safe space' where no one can question your distorted view of reality and expose the smear campaigns against Linux.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 0:56 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (7 responses)

OK gnomefu/brine/I have a pretty good idea who else: stop. This stuff is not welcome here. I am very deeply opposed to tactics like the deletion of posts; some readers give me a lot of grief for that. My convictions on that score will last no longer here.

You people are determined to attack somebody who has done far more for our community than you ever will. You will need to carry out your attacks somewhere else.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 1:33 UTC (Sat) by gnomefu (guest, #106490) [Link] (6 responses)

Perhaps you should pay more attention and stop those parties wheeling out Sandler conspiracy stories to slander and attack the LF? No one is fooled by the shreeks of 'victim hood' when the perpetrators get caught with there hand in the cookie jar.

They have seemingly spun you in a circle to the point of dizziness. They have a big red target on Linux its organisations and users.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 16:11 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (5 responses)

Sjees. Corbet is entirely right: please take your shortsighted, obnoxious, socially-challenged, ignorant, redneck ass somewhere else. This thing has nothing to do with the feminism and equality stuff you seem to hate so much and as that is clearly all you can talk about, please shut up.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 16:33 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

So, if you think I'm right, could you please let this thing die out? This, too, is a personal attack, I'd really rather not see any more of it here. Blowing on the embers just does not help.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 17:01 UTC (Sat) by liw (subscriber, #6379) [Link]

Not blowing on embers, I hope:

May I remind everyone that it is a really good idea to make sure your backups work. Have you tested your backups recently? Have you run any backups recently? Ever?

If you hadn't realised, backups are AWESOME!

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 18:49 UTC (Sat) by gnomefu (guest, #106490) [Link] (2 responses)

Reading your racist and sexist swivel eyed hate tantrum clearly highlights the real problem and where the real hatred in the Linux community is coming from.

Your racist and sexist ideologies and beliefs have no place in the Linux community.

I ask LWN staff to suspend jospoortvliet's account for making direct racist and abusive statements to me. If LWN has any credibility in its claims of disallowing racist and abusive behaviour and statements then you have to act on this incident. Otherwise there can be no other conclusion then LWN supports and allows racism sexism and abuse on your website.

This thread is being mirrored as evidence.

There are many organisations fighting against racism and sexism that would be interested to know weather or not LWN allows such people as subscribers.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 20:16 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm sorry. You folks started this, you don't get to play the victim now.

I told Jos to stop; he appears to have done so. You, instead, do not listen so well. Posting privileges removed. Any further sock puppets you create will be dealt with summarily.

This conversation is done.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 24, 2016 10:47 UTC (Sun) by mgedmin (guest, #34497) [Link]

Thank you.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 2:53 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

Ugh, time to turn on the guest filtering option for a week or two.

Fortunately these trolls have no way around that — it's against their religious beliefs.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 3:48 UTC (Sat) by piotrjurkiewicz_ (guest, #106508) [Link] (6 responses)

(I wrote here an elaborated answer explaining why in my opinion Karen Sandler's rule was a bad period for both Gnome and open source. Editor removed that comment, apparently in order to not reignite the flame war. However, I still think that I have a right to respond to rahvin's accusations, so I am posting this short response.)

> the editorial staff asked you to stop posting

In the last thread editor asked me to come back to the original topic (http://lwn.net/Articles/672819/) and I complied with his request (http://lwn.net/Articles/672835/).

> The audience of this website is not interested in what you have to say

So far only few people stated that, using rather abusive tone (calling others 'idiots' and 'trolls' instead trying to disprove their criticism of KS actions). As I believe that most of this website audience are well-mannered people, those behaving that way that cannot be a good sample of the population.

I will stop here, as editor apparently does not want to see further discussion on this topic here. As my final point, I would like to wish you that some day you will understand that KS decision to start consider non-merit factors in open source was a *very* bad thing, which will have profound negative consequences in the future.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 12:48 UTC (Sat) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (5 responses)

As my final point, I would like to wish you that some day you will understand that KS decision to start consider non-merit factors in open source was a *very* bad thing, which will have profound negative consequences in the future.

You made that point already with your absurd "true programming" label. And as I noted, the things that you don't consider to have "merit" have been regarded as essential aspects of any complete software project for quite some time.

Many projects would benefit from a larger contributor base where the "true programmers" contribute a lower proportion of the total resulting work. One might have to reach beyond the normal "true programmers" demographic to achieve this. And there we have the basis of an idea for something: have you worked out what that might be?

(I actually wonder how "true programmers" would get a degree or other higher education qualification. In some education systems, one doesn't need to write any kind of thesis at bachelor degree level, which is why some employers insist on a masters degree. Or maybe their supervisor had to really drag such people away from "true programming" and push them hard to write something up.)

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 12:56 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> I actually wonder how "true programmers" would get a degree or other higher education qualification.

Oh, that's easy -- Scotland, where only the truest of the true can be found.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 14:35 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

I still think this conversation has little to do with the current change in the Linux Foundation's by-laws, and I still think we would be better off if it wound down. Please, can we let that happen?

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 29, 2016 8:51 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

Vague impression that "off-topicness" was role-modeled even higher than the top of this thread...

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 18:56 UTC (Sat) by trenton (guest, #106520) [Link] (1 responses)

> the things that you don't consider to have "merit" have been regarded as essential aspects of any complete software project for quite some time.

As far as I understood the previous conversation, by saying 'non-merit factors' OP meant things like gender and sexual orientation, which were key factors in OPW candidate selection process. To be honest, I don't think that they 'have been regarded as essential aspects of any complete software project for quite some time', nor they should be regarded as such.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 30, 2016 15:06 UTC (Sat) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

Just to rectify any misunderstanding here, the OP suggested that OPW projects (unlike GSoC projects) involved things that were not "true programming", suggesting a connection between gender and the ability to do "true programming".

My point was that even the things that the OP does not ostensibly regard as having any merit (a separate issue to any "merit" in selection criteria) are actually essential parts of programming and software development, specifically things like documentation (not the other stuff regarding selection criteria, just to repeat myself).

It would be absurd to suggest that gender and sexual orientation are essential aspects of software development, but if anyone appears to believe such a thing, it would be the OP, not me.

(I have nothing to add on the topic of bureaucracy in what amounts to a corporate "slush fund" with a bit of programming being done on the side. My apologies for extending the thread purely to clarify the above.)

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 18:37 UTC (Fri) by mtaht (guest, #11087) [Link] (10 responses)

Zemlin still dodges a question, in that he restates that their purpose in killing the community "Gets a vote on a board member" feature was to retain those friendly to their org in the org. Different voices rotating in - regardless of race, creed, color, sex, and all the other BS dragged into this discussion - is generally a good idea, over time.

I am still quite scarred by what happened to ICANN by 2002 - I know karl Aurbach and the backstory there fairly well... and I would have preferred that LF try to find ways to engage with the community better.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 22:24 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (9 responses)

The response reads like something a politician would say where they aren't denying the allegation, just trying to change the question.

He needs to address the elephant in the room, this change occurred when someone from SFLC was going to try to join the board, a board that contains companies that have been sued by SFLC for violating the GPL. Even if there is no impropriety there, there is the appearance of it and they need to address that specific issue instead of trying to "re-frame the question". They should release the raw transcripts of the board meetings for the last year and prove that the board never discussed this.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 0:01 UTC (Sat) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link] (1 responses)

A correction. SFLC has not sued anyone for GPL violations. It is the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) that is funding Christoph Hellwig's lawsuit against VMware in Germany.

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vmware-laws...

If you support GPL enforcement, please donate to SFC (here):

https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 1:16 UTC (Sat) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

I knew I was going to get that wrong, I should have checked and cut/paste it, thanks for the clarification. The acronyms are too similar for someone with dyslexia and I can't always tell the difference without sounding out the entire name. But my mistake, thanks for the links.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 6:02 UTC (Sat) by alison (subscriber, #63752) [Link] (6 responses)

I especially admire this part:

"the kernel developers continue to appoint a director as well. We welcome and value the continuing participation of Grant Likely in that capacity. "

I find it hard to believe that anyone objects to Grant Likely's service on the board; there is no one better qualified. Yet, we have here in the LWN audience a huge fraction of 'kernel developers'. Does anyone among us know how Grant was selected? How does this case exemplify improved community outreach precisely? And how do we nominate Karen as a board member in the promised new process?

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 11:07 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Grant was elected to the Technical Advisory Board by people who voted in-person at an election held at the joint social event of the Linux Kernel Summit and the conference it was associated with. The TAB then voted to choose Grant as chair. Conventionally, the chair of the TAB becomes the TAB at-large board member on the LF board.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 11:12 UTC (Sat) by snits (guest, #37976) [Link] (4 responses)

I'm pretty sure he gets selected by the technical advisory board, which itself is made up of kernel developers elected at the kernel summit.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 26, 2016 21:38 UTC (Tue) by error27 (guest, #8346) [Link] (3 responses)

Everyone on the TAB is a kernel developer, yes, but anyone could be elected. The kernel summit is always co-located with a far bigger conference and everyone at the conference gets to vote.

I wasn't there last year. Normally, it's sort of chaotic... :/ I think you get a minute to explain what you would do but no microphone so it doesn't matter. Basically people just vote for whoever they know...

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 2:20 UTC (Wed) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (2 responses)

> ...and everyone at the conference gets to vote.

and you don't even need to be at the conference to nominate. It helps though.

> Normally, it's sort of chaotic... :/

I was there last year and it seemed to run quite well, though there were comments about trying to do better this year so if your "it's" was short for "it was", that is probably accurate.

> Basically people just vote for whoever they know...

I'm sure reputation plays a large role. The 60 second presentation can help remind the audience which aspects of that reputation to focus on. While my vote was more based on reputation than presentation, both played a valuable role I think.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 9:57 UTC (Wed) by error27 (guest, #8346) [Link] (1 responses)

I wasn't there this year. In my first draft of that comment I wrote "You get a minute to explain your position, but the election is in the basement of a museum so it's impossible to find it in time to hear the first presentations and there isn't a microphone so it doesn't matter."

It would be better if people could put their policy statements in an email.

TAB elections

Posted Jan 27, 2016 14:55 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

The museum experience — with the bagpipe band wandering through in the middle for extra local color — was kind of a low point. That helped to motivate some improvements in the process. In 2015 there was a separate room with a microphone, paper ballots for private voting, etc. Credit is due to Kristen Accardi, who pushed for improvements in the process and laid out the new voting mechanism.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 19:58 UTC (Fri) by chirlu (guest, #89906) [Link] (3 responses)

I would have expected to read a statement that the timing of these bylaw changes was conincidental and not prompted by one particular person declaring candidacy; but there is no such statement.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 16:07 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (2 responses)

No, he dodges that question very well, focusing instead on the 2-3 idiotic trolls who have been trying to poison the debate with some irrelevant anti-feminism nonsense.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 24, 2016 16:07 UTC (Sun) by zuki (subscriber, #41808) [Link]

I don't think it was done "very well". It seems rather ham-fisted, great majority of comments is "Huh? This doesn't answer the question about individual membership voting rights at all". And the opening sentence about being locked away with no internet in China is rather inane.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 0:23 UTC (Wed) by trenton (guest, #106520) [Link]

> poison the debate with some irrelevant

I agree that it is /probably/ irrelevant, but I remind you that it was mjg59 who brought up Karen Sandler's name into this case.

> idiotic trolls
> anti-feminism nonsense

It's a pity that you /the community/ weren't so explicit and firm when some other idiotic trolls /using your language/ were poisoning the open source with the feminist nonsense first.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 22:49 UTC (Fri) by joey (guest, #328) [Link] (1 responses)

"we added value to our membership program by taking away your vote"

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 10:21 UTC (Sat) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link]

"Oh, and you're not a individual member any more either. You're just a supporter."

In all seriousness I believe that much of the disappointment over this change is caused by an expectation that the Linux Foundation should be more than a pure trade association. The name casts a wider net that implies some form of obligation not only to corporations but also to the individuals of the Linux community in general, developers as well as users.

The current by-law change now makes it clear that the foundation never intended itself to be a place for anything but corporate members.

Still it would be better if they stated it even more plainly: We're a corporate trade association. If you're an individual that agree with our goals feel free to donate, but keep in mind that this isn't a social club for individuals.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 23, 2016 10:28 UTC (Sat) by sml (subscriber, #75391) [Link] (1 responses)

Huh? He didn't address the main contention of mjg59's blog post (anti-SFC sentiment among corporate board members) at all!

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 24, 2016 13:45 UTC (Sun) by sheepdestroyer (guest, #54968) [Link]

Did you honestly expect otherwise?