Re: Petition for referendum

[David Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi Jonathan,

To my mind, it's clear that it's an issue which has been debated, and 
that there's a split on the issue in the community. And a number of 
people I respect support the idea of a referendum. So I don't think 
there'll be a problem getting 37 people or whatever to sign up for it.

What I heard tonight was a reluctance on the part of the board to 
request that a referendum take place. Not taking a stance on the 
referendum as a group, just requesting that it take place.

And I feel like we lost two weeks, because if that was the position of 
the board two weeks ago, the petition would be all signed up, and it'd 
be in the hands of the election committee now. What was the point of the 
board asking that I start a debate on the issue, if the board was never 
going to request the referendum? It sounds like a double fudge to me.

Cheers,
Dave.

Jonathan Blandford wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 21:32 +0200, David Neary wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I would like to propose reducing board size to 7 people. The board do 
> > not want to decide on this reduction, but will respect the decision of 
> > the membership by referendum.
> >
> > However, the board didn't agree on even having a referendum this evening 
> > (this is the problem which reducing board size will fix).
>
>
> That's not a fair characterization, Dave.  We can't come to consensus
> that shrinking the board is a good idea, and told you to go ahead and
> propose the referendum so we could discuss it on foundation-list.  And
> if the point of such shrinking is to remove dissent (or the possibility
> of dissent), it seems an even worse idea.  We only had eight people at
> the meeting today, afterall.
>
> Thanks,
> -Jonathan

--
Dave Neary
bolsh gimp org
Lyon, France