Re: End does not justify the means [Was: Reducing the board size]

[Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>]

On 10/27/05, Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org> wrote:
> <quote who="Vincent Untz">
>
> > On Thu, October 27, 2005 03:15, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > > 7 is way too small to represent the diversity of our community. Consider
> > > it in these terms: 2 people from 3 contributing companies and 1 other
> > > person.
> > >
> > > No thanks. Our community deserves a diverse board, and structured
> > > leadership for our organisation.
> >
> > Well, looking at the previous elections results, I see a lot of Novell,
> > Red Hat (and in the past, Sun) people in the board. There were some
> > "independant" people too, but not that much.
> >
> > I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just trying to show some facts.
> >
> > So, if I follow your logic, I would say we shouldn't accept more than 2
> > (or 3) people from the same company in a board with 11 directors.  Does it
> > sound like a change you would support?
>
> We could do that. However, I was using the worst case scenario of a board
> with 7 directors to demonstrate the possible reduction in diversity. There
> is less opportunity for fresh faces to be part of the organisation... Which
> counters your "no more popularity contest" comments. It's going to be HARDER
> to get someone like Dave Neary on the board.
>
> Let's get this really clear: The proposal to reduce the number of board
> members was based on the reduction of diversity of opinion so as "to make
> decisions more easily".

You can try to make it clear like that, but that's just not the case. 
That was how Dave presented it, and I completely disagreed with those
reasons for the change (even if not publicly).  But that was not by
any means the only reason for the proposal.  The reason I voted yes
was that it appears to me that the majority of the board members
didn't really want to be on the board; it's possible that I have
judged wrongly but the past couple of elections left that strong
impression and Luis' emails seemed to strongly confirm that.

Elijah