Re: Draft of Proposal for the GNOME Foundation.

[Maciej Stachowiak <mjs eazel com>]

Rusty Conover <rconover@zootweb.com> writes:

> On Fri, 14 Jul 2000 11:06:27 Joe Shaw wrote:
> > > I don't think "any contribution" is the right place to set the
> > > threshold. When I get a 5-line patch I don't want to have to worry
> > > about whether I'm giving that person full GNOME voting priveleges
> > > automatically if I check it in.
> > 
> > Why not? They're a contributor, they should have a vote.
> 
> I agree whole heartly.

This assumes that one minor patch is equivalent to a demonstrated
commitment over time. I don't think it is. I think setting the bar
this low devalues the effort put forth by people who contribute
consistently for some time. 

Similarly, if you want to become a US citizen, you can't do that by
living here one day. Many people live here and contribute to our
country without getting a vote. But they all get the opportunity over
time. (I'm a naturalized US citizen by the way, and I think this
aspect of the system works well).

> > 
> > > I don't think we should allow any referendums other than recall of the
> > > board.
> > 
> > Hmm. If we have a sufficiently large enough requirement for a referendum
> > (5%, 10%?), I see no reason to prevent the general membership from
> > overriding what a majority thinks is a bad idea.
> 
> Meanwhile, what are the actual stipulations for recalling the board?  I hope
> every week there is not yet another "no-confidence" vote being held.  Maybe the
> board cannot be recalled except during specified time frames. 

I think it should be possible to have a recall vote at any time, but
there should be a reasonably high threshold for even having the
vote. I think 10% of membership is actually a fairly high bar to pass.

> What would be the main purpose of referendums, implementing a new
> splash screen?  I don't think they would be all that useful.

Yeah, and you know, I thought about it more, and if recall is the only
referendum you can have, and the board makes a decision so unpopular
that there is a serious chance of a recall vote, I think it's likely
they'd reverse the decision or find some compromise. I think this is
better than random decisions of theirs possibly being reversed.

> > 
> > > The board becomes completely non-useful past a certain size. Better to
> > > declare a particular size range and let the membership decide if a
> > > particular slate is the right size in that range.
> > 
> > I agree. I think 9 is good, 11 at most at least initially.
> 
> I think 11 would be on the low end with 15 being a better number to get an
> accurate representation of the GNOME population.  With small board membership it
> turns into more of a popularity contest rather then a functional organization with
> people motivated to be on the board rather then just winning elections.

If you elect it as a slate, we can trust the people who come up with
slates to try to create balanced, representative ones. I personally
think 15 is a size at which it starts to get difficult to make
progress.
 
 - Maciej