Fedora Board election results

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 21:52 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 13:52 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
> >> On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 11:21 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> >> > On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > > On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 08:40 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> >> > >> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 8:23 AM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > >> > What purpose would getting the answers to those questions serve?
> >> > >>
> >> > >> If we are unhappy with the total voter turnout and want to do
> >> > >> something about it for the next election... then making an effort to
> >> > >> identify if there is an imbalance in the voting would be worthwhile.
> >> > >> Did our European contributors vote in proportion to their cla numbers
> >> > >> compared to the North American contributors? If not.. then we know to
> >> > >> lean on Max and try to get those numbers up for the next election.  He
> >> > >> should be fluent in European by now, so he shouldn't need any help
> >> > >> traveling the countryside gathering voters in his wake.
> >> > >
> >> > > That answers the geographic question you had.  Sounds like a very sane
> >> > > reason and I'm also curious as to what the results of that would be.
> >> > >
> >> > > Why do you want to know about the percentage of Red Hat voters vs.
> >> > > community?
> >> > >
> >> >
> >> > If the majority of people who voted are inside of RH and not out...
> >> > then you have a potential bias you need to focus on the next election.
> >> > Why didn't people outside of RH vote?
> > My personal view: People feel the board is a RH internal business, which
> > has never represented the "people" and has never dealt with issues
> > directly affecting people.
> >
> 
> I don't agree, but I have no idea what people you are talking about...
> the proletariat people or the people working on Fedora?
The latter, because that's the people which were supposed to vote.

But ask yourselves:

* What does the board do which directly impacts "joe average Fedora
contributor"? IMO, almost nothing - It's FESCO, which does.

* How has the board been composed so far? An overwhelming RH majority.

* How do you expect the board be composed in future?
%50 RH assigned seats, the rest is being elected by a RH dominated group
of voters. So, everything but seeing a ca. 2/3-3/4 RH-dominated board
would be a surprise. The next board will have a 90-100% RH-dominated
board, well, the overall situation hasn't changed at all.
This board is designed to be a RH internal business.

> >> > Is the process working?
> > IMO: no.
> >
> > In addition to what I wrote above, I found the election has been poorly
> > communicated/promoted - Even I almost missed it.
> >
> > And when voting, I had difficulties in finding candidates I would want
> > to vote for ...
> >
> 
> Ok I don't see how you could have missed it.
Ohh, it had been quite easy ... it got lost in the lists' traffic.

>  It got sent out in
> multiple mailing lists, lots of people blogged about it.. but I guess
> I was more aware since I wasn't going to try and run this time because
> I don't want to be overbooked.
I was aware about "the vote is going to happen some time soon", but I
almost missed the final "opening". I only noticed it when cleaning up my
FAB-list folder before going on vacation for a week and voted "last
minute" before leaving.

> Now for finding candidates.. you can always run yourself or find
> someone you want to run and get them nominated (eg get them to want to
> run).
One can't do everything oneself. That's one of fundamental working
principles of democracy. I simply could not find "the candidate" I would
like to vote for and therefore resorted to "voting for the least evil".

If I wasn't a deeply convinced democrat, who takes participating in
votes for governments for granted, I probably would have abstained the
vote.

Ralf