Fedora Board election results

[Josh Boyer]

On Tue, 2008-06-24 at 09:26 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 9:12 AM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why do you want to know about the percentage of Red Hat voters vs.
> > community?
> >
> > Or, put another way, what difference does that distinction make?  Should
> > we get the same data for Dell and IBM (as they have separate CLAs like
> > Red Hat)?
> >
> > IMHO, a voter's employer just doesn't matter.
> 
> You have stated an ideal, but its not the current reality.  It
> shouldn't matter... but it does...deep down in people's brains the
> distinction matters.  

And I'd argue that you are only going to deepen that by continuing to
distinguish Red Hat vs. non-Red Hat.

> The fact is Mike's initial comment very much
> grounded in the distinction between inside Red Hat and outside.   

His comment was directed at the fact that the newly appointed Board is
mostly Red Hat.  Nothing to do with who individual voter's employers
are.

> In fact we've made quite a big deal that we have more external
> contributors then red hat contributors.  We continue to draw a
> distinction between these groups in our efforts to point out there's
> no distinction.  

If you want to continue to highlight that distinction to point out there
is no distinction, then have all the Red Hat contributors use a
@fedoraproject.org email alias for everything.  The ridiculousness of
the situation wouldn't change either way.

> With that in mind I want a picture of the breakdown
> between redhat and non-redhat voters so I can know if we have done an
> appropriate job communicating the importance of the board elections
> out into the external community.

Just assume we haven't done an appropriate job.  With a 6% voter
turnout, we have failed regardless.

> If there is a significant voting imbalance, we find it, then we take steps 
> to make that identified imbalance go away next time by getting feedback
> from that segment of the community sooner rather than later.

Continuing to distinguish the two groups isn't helping anything.
Everyone that contributes to Fedora is a community member, regardless of
employer.  Focus on everyone and you lose nothing.  The reason your
request for geography based demographics makes sense is that we actually
have mechanisms in place to _help_ there, primarily through the
Ambassador project.

If you get your employer percentages, now what?  You certainly aren't
going to tell Red Hat "oh, there was an imbalance so you need to vote
less/more."  However, you _can_ tell the community as a _whole_ "Hey!
The Board vote is super important because ..."  That message is the one
we need to get across to every contributor.

The goal is 100% voter turnout from our eligible contributors.  We don't
care where they work.

josh