X.Org BoD meeting minutes 2015-07-23

[Daniel Stone]

On 6 August 2015 at 16:23, Luc Verhaegen <libv at skynet.be> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 06, 2015 at 03:12:03PM +0000, Bart Massey wrote:
>> Luc wrote:
>> > Let's not extend the oligopoly on the technical side to the .org as well.
>>
>> The "oligopoly" on the technical side today consists of the people willing
>> to actually contribute to X development. It's hardly some kind of grand
>> cabal. Honestly, I don't think there's any major company in the world that
>> has the slightest interest in controlling the technical direction of X,
>> which is perceived as a dying legacy technology as far as I can tell. At
>> most, they want it to work on some of their hardware.
>>
>> However, the state of technical development doesn't really matter. The
>> X.Org Foundation is at this point a purely service organization. As a
>> matter of policy, the Board does not influence the technical direction of
>> X. The Board's activities are mainly dealing with funds management and
>> legal details, running conferences and making EVoC work. It's kind of
>> terrible work that I am not particularly good at, which is why I finally
>> got frustrated with it and moved on: I am overwhelmingly grateful to those
>> who keep at it year after year. As far as I'm concerned, *anyone* who wants
>> a piece of that should be encouraged to apply, and any restrictions we have
>> on ability to serve should be hardcore grounded in desperate need. I see no
>> desperate need for a restriction here: the restriction that the Members
>> approve of a candidate by popular vote should be sufficient. I will happily
>> vote for the Board's proposed change, and would just as happily vote for
>> the change they are not proposing that would eliminate corporate membership
>> limits altogether. I encourage others to do likewise.
>
> In your top-post, you completely ignored the other statements i made.

Bear this one in mind later.

> Also, you confuse willingness with having the means to, the latter is
> also the primary reason for your stepping down from the board. You
> reached a point where your willingness no longer outweighed the
> overhead.
>
> But that is besides the point. The issue is not the limitation, the
> issue is the fact that no-one besides me seems to have bothered to
> nominate new board members before, and that usually the election
> committee couldn't be bothered to encourage the nominated members to
> take care of the few formalities needed.

I'm not particularly sure why it's all entirely incumbent on the
board. If the membership can't collectively be bothered to click four
buttons on what was essentially an existential issue (SPI), despite
any amount of board publicity and prodding, then you can't pin the
blame for people being unable/unwilling to throw substantial amounts
of their time on the board.

> Solve that, and a max 25% company representation on an 8 person board no
> longer is an issue.
>
> If that is not solved, it will remain just as difficult as before to get
> new boardmembers to participate, and we lose a safeguard for which there
> is no sufficient argument for removal.

'No sufficient argument'? Bart made it, but you just decided to ignore
it in your bottom-post. I guess quoting style isn't a guarantee of
much anything.

Probably goes without saying - as another ex-board member who realised
he didn't have anything like the time required - that I totally AOL
Bart.

Cheers,
Daniel