On 24.06.2008 21:39, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>
Which is why you ask the community, at large, "Why didn't you vote?"
Some of the reasons (IMHO of course):
- the base of active contributes that really want to be involved is a
lot smaller then the total numbers
- those permitted to vote didn't get a direct information (e.g. a direct
mail straight to their inbox (or was there one and I forgot about
it/missed it?)); only those that follow planet or some of the mailing
lists were aware that a election was in progress (which might be a good
thing as I#d consider only those people as active in Fedora; but that's
a different topic).
I almost decided not to vote this time, because in the list of eight
nominees I didn't see any real community representatives.
[lot's of good point to most of whom I partly or totally agree to
snipped, as they are already being discussed]
In the end I voted, but used only a small fraction of my voting points.
A bit like participation and boycott at the same time.
I actually in the beginning also didn't know if it was worth voting or
not. In the end I gave most points to the spare time contributes and
gave nearly none to the others. It's not that I think the Red Hat people
do a worse job than the others; in fact I suppose it's even the opposite
in some of the cases. But I actually feared a bit that the result of the
election might look like the outcome we have now.
To explain that a bit more: those elected are much present in the Fedora
Project (lists, development work, ...). If you are a Fedora contributor
then chances are high that you had to deal with them or at least heard
of them a few times. So when it comes to an election like this people
just vote for those nominees they know of/were in contact with. That's
how humans afaics vote.
But three of those four elected are Red Hat employees for whom working
and contributing to Fedora is part of their job (afaik; but is it the
case for Seth? not completely sure, sorry. But he is well known in
Fedora though Yum, so that might be and important factor); the fourth is
mainly working in another area of Red Hat. The only spare time
contributor that was elected was *quite active* on the
lists/planet/board in the past months and with his special way/humor
easy to remember for people -- those are the things that likely helped a
lot in this election afaics.
So one might say it were the right people that got elected -- the
nominees that at least from a quick look were the most active one the
recent months in Fedora.
But on the other hand the those three Red Hat employees that got elected
had a big advantage: they did a lot (not all!) of their Fedora work
during their work time. That's not right or wrong, it's just the way it
is afaics.
Which brings me to the point: Maybe doing public elections to form the
Board is not the right thing to do as Red Hat employees that work on
Fedora have a big advantage accidentally. Maybe other way are better
then a election. Or we need something like the gnome board style: limit
the maximum numbers of people from one company (whatever company that is).
Just my 2 cent.
Cu
knurd
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