X.Org BoD meeting minutes 2015-07-23

[Luc Verhaegen]

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. 
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.

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.

Luc Verhaegen.