Attachment '03-04-2013-meeting.log'
Download[16:13:14] <muelli> I take that as a yes, we can start. Although it's not really nice to start with two people missing that wanted to participate.\ [16:13:36] <muelli> but there are only a few things, nothing really urgent or critical. I think everything will work out fine. We just need to be aware of the necessary steps and be clear who does what. [16:13:56] <muelli> so let's start then. [16:14:03] <muelli> Let's talk about the elections. [16:14:21] <muelli> We have a "problem" with people whose membership expires during the elections. Right now there are 42 people that may fall into that category. [16:14:21] <muelli> according to mysql> SELECT * FROM foundationmembers WHERE last_renewed_on >= '2011-05-01' AND last_renewed_on <= '2011-07-01'; [16:14:21] <muelli> So someone could vote but could technically not challenge. We can acknowledge but ignore that if we wish to. But we should do so consciously. [16:15:27] <muelli> The correct fix would probably be to exclude the people that do have their membership renewed earlier than 2011-07, but that's messy, because the token generation works on a table of the current members :-| [16:15:41] <muelli> also the list of members is generated from that very table. [16:16:09] <fabiana> what's the criteria for voting? just being a member? [16:16:13] <muelli> yep. [16:16:18] <muelli> well. [16:16:27] <muelli> Being a member and not a emeritus member. [16:16:48] <muelli> since the latter are members, too, but without voting rights. But we don't keep those in the database. [16:17:08] <av> that is why we don't renew emeritus memberships on Mango btw [16:17:20] <fabiana> so, could we announce those renewals in advance? [16:17:42] <muelli> yes. That list of 42 people is there. [16:18:48] <muelli> http://dpaste.com/1045808/ [16:20:38] <fabiana> so one thing we could do is give these people the chance to renew before the elections, no? [16:21:03] <fabiana> (let me know if I'm understanding the problem in the wrong way, I'm new to this elections thing :)) [16:21:15] <muelli> yes. But not everyone will do it. And the scenario I have in mind is that someone votes and challenges, but by that is not a member anymore. [16:22:03] <muelli> That may not be a problem if we decide to. We can say that, well, despite the rules we set up, you may challenge the election if you voted. Regardless of your membership status at the end of the election period. [16:22:32] <av> yes, I agree with that, we rarely had challenges anyway [16:23:16] <fabiana> oh, I see the problem now, thanks muelli [16:23:19] <muelli> ah, currently we have " Any eligible voter may challenge the preliminary results by e-mailing elections@gnome.org prior to 2012-06-19." [16:23:21] <muelli> that's fine [16:23:22] <fabiana> and, yeah, I agree with that too [16:23:50] <muelli> but that thrid paragraph needs rephrasing "Members of the GNOME Foundation as of 2012-05-23 are eligible to vote in the elections. Anyone who has made a contribution to GNOME can apply for membership by completing the application. Also, your membership needs to be valid at least until the end of the elections (2012-06-19). " [16:23:53] <muelli> http://vote.gnome.org/2012/rules.html [16:24:17] <muelli> Maybe that last sentence can be deleted. Then we should be all set. [16:25:01] <av> agreed [16:25:08] <fabiana> +1 [16:25:12] <muelli> cool. That was easy ;-) [16:25:32] <av> muelli, the idea is to let everyone vote without too much pain [16:25:32] <muelli> so I will delete the last sentence then. [16:25:37] <av> :) [16:26:06] <av> and given the problems we had two years ago it's best to clarify everything before the elections start [16:26:11] <muelli> and I will include smth about emeritus members. Since by now they could technically vote. Although they couldn't because that membership status doens\t have voting rights -.- [16:26:15] <av> so no one will complain about missing voting rights [16:26:35] <av> muelli, emeritus members shouldn't be able to vote [16:26:40] <fabiana> "by now they could technically vote"? [16:26:44] <av> their membership is technically expired [16:26:59] <muelli> well. with the formulation in that paragraph. [16:27:15] <muelli> it's contradicting the emeritus membership. So that contradiction should be lifted. [16:27:22] <av> sure, technically they can't vote since they won't receive a token [16:27:27] <av> but we may want to clarify that in the rules [16:27:35] <av> since the emeritus status is new [16:27:36] <muelli> yes [16:27:42] <fabiana> yes, indeed [16:28:18] <muelli> "Members of the GNOME Foundation as of 2012-05-23 are eligible to vote in the elections." by itself could be read as "all members". I think it should be enhanced to make clear that only members with voting rightare eligible or so. [16:28:34] <av> yup [16:28:48] <muelli> which shuold be clear by itself, but I think it's better to have as few things that could be mis-read as possible. [16:29:06] <av> muelli, we should make a statement where we define who can be considered as "Member of the GNOME Foundation" [16:29:16] <av> ideally as the very first point on the rules [16:29:28] <muelli> heh. yeah. Maybe link to the bylaws instead of the charter. [16:29:31] <muelli> that should include all that. [16:29:38] <av> yup [16:29:50] <muelli> another good point. let me take note of that. [16:29:55] <av> muelli, but the bylaws don't have any reference to the emeritus status [16:30:27] <muelli> correct. So we mention that in the third paragraph somehow [16:30:37] <av> ok [16:30:48] <muelli> k. anything else reg. expired or eligible memberships? [16:32:47] <fabiana> does the elections announcement summarizes those rules? or just link to them? [16:32:54] <av> mmm..that should be all for me, fabiana, do you have anything to add? [16:33:02] <av> fabiana, just a link to them [16:33:05] <av> on the announce [16:34:53] <av> muelli, at some point I also plan to put Foundation members into LDAP [16:34:53] <fabiana> I see, just wondering if we should summarize the eligibility criteria to minimize confusion [16:35:10] <fabiana> but I don't really know how much confusion those things usually create, so just wondering [16:35:18] <av> muelli, does it look sane enough to you? or having them on a mysql DB looks better? [16:36:02] <av> I can agree it easily to maintain them on mysql since you have access to them while LDAP i heavily restricted [16:36:09] <muelli> fabiana: Good suggestion. Making more clear is most of time a good idea. I will try to make it more clear. [16:36:21] <muelli> I think we could go through those rules and try to make sense out of them. I.e. weed out obsoleted things or put clarifying statements in. They are quite old and probably never read ;-) Is anyone up to that? And maybe then report to m-c-l? [16:37:25] <fabiana> the rules at http://vote.gnome.org/2012/rules.html? [16:37:34] <muelli> fabiana: yeah, 2013 ;-) [16:37:42] <muelli> I'll push once I've done the changes. [16:38:04] <fabiana> yep, that sounds like a good idea [16:38:31] <muelli> so will you read and report if you find anything fabiana? [16:39:25] <fabiana> I can do this, but, as I mentioned, I know very little about elections [16:39:28] <muelli> cool! [16:39:34] <muelli> av: I think it doesn't make sense to have two places of membership information. But that's what we currently have, right? Stuff in LDAP has information about the login and all, so does the membership database. I think it makes most sense to unify that data. [16:39:45] <fabiana> I'll ping you guys if I have any questions, though [16:39:46] <muelli> but we better wait until after the elections ;-) [16:39:52] <muelli> fabiana: that's very fine. [16:40:13] <av> muelli, indeed :) [16:40:29] <av> muelli, once the elections are done I can look into making that happen [16:40:34] <muelli> nice [16:40:43] <av> it shouldn't be hard, just adding 3-4 fields [16:40:43] <muelli> As for the schedule, I came up with a smth like this: http://dpaste.com/1045772/ which is pretty much the old year's schedule. I think it worked well. So I guess this one will, too. Any objections? Have I missed anything? [16:40:51] <fabiana> muelli: let me know when you push 2013, then [16:41:23] <av> looks good [16:41:39] <fabiana> good to me too [16:41:54] <av> plenty of time for making the needed adjustements for GUADEC [16:42:41] <muelli> 2012-08-01, yeah, lots of time. [16:43:08] <muelli> I will send it to the board then, waiting for feedback. I don't think there will be objections though. [16:43:17] <muelli> Oh, and for GUADEC we'll have to prepare some slides and some stats, so if anybody is keen on that, you can start to think about that ;-) [16:44:12] <av> hardly I'll be able to work on that directly, plenty of outstanding items :( [16:44:22] <fabiana> I'd be happy to help with the slides, once we have some stats :) [16:44:46] <av> I can help fabiana with that for sure though :) [16:45:35] <muelli> so looking at the schedule, we need to make sure we send all the necessary announcements. [16:45:49] <av> yup [16:45:55] <av> I can do that [16:46:27] <av> I'll take my mails from the past year and build smth on that [16:46:27] <muelli> coolio. It's easy, anyway. Get the old mail, replace the date, send ;-) [16:46:40] <av> maybe adding fabiana's modifications to it [16:47:09] <muelli> yeah, I don't think we really need to decide who is going to announce what when. Knowing that there will be someone that is able to do it, is sufficient. [16:47:21] <av> yup [16:47:23] <muelli> I.e. I probably can't make it at the end of May due to LinuxTag and GNOME.Asia Summit. [16:47:41] <av> are you going to GNOME.Asia? [16:47:42] <av> nice [16:47:47] <muelli> dunno yet. [16:48:32] <muelli> but that potentially means that I can't send tokens. Are you guys good with creating and sending those? [16:48:48] <av> I did that the past year since you were running for the Board [16:49:01] <av> also there's an howto on the wiki [16:49:34] <av> https://live.gnome.org/MembershipCommittee/ElectionsHowTo [16:49:58] <muelli> yep. [16:50:06] <fabiana> I can help with whatever is needed, provided instructions [16:50:20] <fabiana> but for the end of elections I'll be in a conference too, so won't be around much [16:50:59] <muelli> awesome. That's all I have :) [16:52:09] <muelli> Any hint for me how to navigate to http://www.gnome.org/foundation/governance/ from the main page? [16:53:05] <av> muelli, from http://www.gnome.org/foundation/ there's a little yellow space on the bottom of the page [16:53:10] <av> that points to /governance [16:53:40] <fabiana> the Board of Directors link also points there [16:54:12] <muelli> ah. thanks [16:54:21] <av> muelli, http://www.gnome.org/foundation/finance/ is people aware of that page? [16:54:28] <muelli> and how to get to the foundation page? [16:54:32] <av> muelli, seems to be not updated since the time I migrated the stuff there [16:54:38] <muelli> ah. from the main page. alright [16:55:47] <muelli> anything else then? [16:56:16] <av> nothing left for me apart the latest question which isn't really relevant for the m-c [16:56:22] <av> worth asking that to the Board^^ [16:57:12] <fabiana> so, muelli, I should review the version of the rules you'll push now, correct? [16:57:19] <muelli> av: yeah. [16:57:22] <muelli> fabiana: yep :) [16:57:32] <av> muelli, will you ask that? [16:57:50] <muelli> av: heh. if you tell me what the question is, yes ;-) [16:58:36] <av> muelli, http://www.gnome.org/foundation/finance/ --> is the Board aware of this? where are the latest financial reports placed if not on that page^ [16:58:54] <av> the last financial report is dated 2011 [16:59:19] <av> maybe the Foundation decided to don't make them public [16:59:40] <av> or maybe the people doing them didn't have the time to do them [16:59:59] <av> muelli, fabiana: have to run now, can you send me the logs of the meeting? [17:00:08] <av> I'm not with my client so no logging enabled [17:00:09] <muelli> k. that's it anyway. Thanks everyone :)
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