X.Org BoD meeting minutes 2015-07-23

[Peter Hutterer]

On Thu, Aug 06, 2015 at 07:33:43PM +0200, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 06, 2015 at 10:21:55AM -0700, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> > On 08/ 6/15 06:10 AM, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
> >> Perhaps the election committee should be more active in
> >> pursuing potential candidates. I suggest several almost every year (i
> >> seem to be the only one who even bothers to do so), only this year it
> >> actually worked as Egbert actively went and poked those that i had
> >> suggested.
> >
> > Every year I was on the election committee we got nominations from
> > multiple people, not just you, and every year we contacted every single
> > person nominated, and most of them declined.
> 
> So why did it work so well this year? Why were there (from memory) no 
> new board members last year when i did not bother to nominate anyone.

correlation != causation

> > If you care this deeply, why do you not run?   If you can understand
> > why you don't run, why are you surprised so many others decline?
> 
> Because:
> a) some elements are way too keen to see me fail, and that would not be 
> productive for anyone involved or the foundation itself.

I think you're overstating the case. This may be a convenient thought for
you to justify your behaviour, but our election process is democratic.  So
unless "some elements" includes a large-enough part of the membership,
getting elected should not be the issue.

Why you think that the other board members would want to see you fail once
elected is beyond me. One problem I could see though is that once you'd be
on the board the onus would actually be on you to be productive and
constructive, which leads us to:

> b) a good democracy needs an opposition which peers over the minutes and 
> wheelings and dealings, and flags things things from time to time.

the fact that you think you need to be in opposition is troubling. it
suggests that you believe you need to be outside, working against a team
instead of being part of that team and steering it to where you think is
best. For example, I believe Daniel has multiple times pointed out errors in
our minutes and/or suggested other options to what we had thought of, yet he
does (to my knowledge) not consider himself as needing to be in opposition.

maybe this attitude is where you should start - instad of trying to kick up
a stink whenever something doesn't go as you want, work with us and point
things out in a civilised manner and be constructive with your criticism.
Believe me when I say we'd be quite happy to offload some of the work.

> c) i already organize the former Xorg devroom at fosdem.

and? being a board member would not prevent you from doing so. Martin
organised XDC last year while being a board member.

Cheers,
   Peter