Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 22, 2016 18:37 UTC (Fri) by mtaht (subscriber, #11087)
Parent article: Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

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 (subscriber, #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 (subscriber, #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.