Re: Second Call for nominations - 2007 SPI Board Election

Neil McGovern writes ("Second Call for nominations - 2007 SPI Board Election"):
> How to nominate:
> ----------------
> Email secretary(at)spi-inc(dot)org(dot) Nominations can be from the candidates, or
> a third party. If the nomination is not from the candidate, they will
> need to confirm their intent to stand before the deadline.

I would like to stand, so please consider this my nomination. I'll
prepare a proper position statement later (probably just before voting
opens I'm afraid) as I'm away from home at the moment and also my
laptop is away for repair.

Thanks,
Ian.

I thought I should write a more extended submission for my board
candidacy:

My views on SPI
---------------

I think SPI's chief role should continue to be accepting and spending
tax-free donations in the USA for use by Free Software projects. A
wider field of projects is a good thing but we should grow organically
rather than conducting a massive campaign to get new projects.

I'm in favour of SPI giving its blessing and support to other useful
and good activities which SPI members are keen to do. I don't see it
as the SPI Board's role to solicit such volunteers or projects, but
rather to act as a friendly advisor and of course a gatekeeper to
ensure that SPI's activities are legal and SPI's assets aren't put at
risk.

I pushed for SPI's current membership-driven governance structure and
I'm glad to see that that is working well now.

Chief challenges for SPI
------------------------

Our recent Treasurer, Josh Berkus, has done sterling work on improving
our financial administration but the arrangements are still sometimes
ad-hoc and disorganised. This is still a source of great concern to
me. I still think this area needs to be improved. I would like to
see professionals take on much more of the routine administration.

Our bylaws are a mess and the previous process for updating them has
stalled. This ought to be fixed.

Controversies
-------------

I thought it would be interesting to note the main decisions made by
the SPI Board which seemed controversial to me - in particular, there
were two where I was outvoted which come particularly to my mind:

* The board decided to transfer the opensource.org domain name to the
Open Source Initiative. I disagreed because I feel that
opensource.org is a resource which rightly belongs to the whole
community and that OSI's governance structure doesn't reflect
that.

* The board decided to accept the Open Voting Foundation as an
Associated Project. I disagreed because I feel that computers are
inherently untrustworthy in the context of public elections and
that making it Free Software is at best a red herring and at worst
a diversion.

I don't mean to re-open the debates on those subjects. I mention them
because but one of the key roles of a board member is to vote on
matters presented to the board for decision and I would like the
SPI members to consider the likely voting behaviour of their
candidates.

There were of course many other disagreements, mostly over essentially
administrative matters.

I'm glad to say that in both of the above cases we were able at least
amongst the board to have a reasonable and productive discussion.
Disagreement and controversy is healthy in a functioning organisation.

The discussion on opensource.org should have been held in public but
was not. As a board member at the time I apologise for that failing -
and as the eventually defeated chief opponent of the transfer I regret
not enlisting the help of the membership.

I will continue to press for SPI to act in the best interests of
society at large as I see it, taking into consideration the views of
the membership and the rest of the board. Needless to say I will
continue to honour the decisions of the board even when I disagree
with them.

My background
-------------

I've been involved in Free Software since 1989. My most notable
contributions have been to Debian: I'm the original author of dpkg,
the Debian Constitution and the Debian bug system. I'm still involved
with Debian and am also a GNU maintainer.

I've been involved in SPI almost since its founding and am very
pleased to have seen it change over the years to the reasonably
competent and member-controlled organisation it is today.

I'm currently employed by Canonical as a developer to work on Ubuntu.
If any conflict of interest between Canonical and SPI were to arise I
would of course recuse myself appropriately.

Ian.

On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 09:28:52PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Controversies
> -------------
> I thought it would be interesting to note the main decisions made by
> the SPI Board which seemed controversial to me - in particular, there
> were two where I was outvoted which come particularly to my mind:
> * The board decided to transfer the opensource.org domain name to the
> Open Source Initiative. I disagreed because I feel that
> opensource.org is a resource which rightly belongs to the whole
> community and that OSI's governance structure doesn't reflect
> that.

This vote went four in favour, one against, one abstention, and three
members absent with regrets.

http://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/meeting-minutes/2006/board-meeting-december-19th-2006.html

> * The board decided to accept the Open Voting Foundation as an
> Associated Project. I disagreed because I feel that computers are
> inherently untrustworthy in the context of public elections and
> that making it Free Software is at best a red herring and at worst
> a diversion.

Apparently those minutes aren't available anywhere. Weird. Anyway,
by my irc logs, the members present at the meeting were:

05:00 <CosmicRay> We have 9 board members, so quorum for today is 6.
05:00 <CosmicRay> We have regrets from Branden.
05:00 <cdlu> David Graham
05:00 <CosmicRay> John Goerzen
05:00 <bdale> Bdale Garbee
05:00 <Hydroxide> Jimmy Kaplowitz
05:00 <IanJackson> Ian Jackson
05:00 <BrucePerens> Bruce Perens
05:00 <cdlu> quorum

(Joey appears present later in the logs), with the vote on OVF going:

05:26 <CosmicRay> [item 6, OVF membership]
05:26 <cdlu> CosmicRay if there is no objection, I move we go straight to voting on
Ian's amendment to the resolution.
05:26 * Hydroxide seconds
05:27 <CosmicRay> !vote start
05:27 <Hydroxide> !vote no
05:27 <CosmicRay> !vote no
05:27 <cdlu> !vote no
05:27 <BrucePerens> !vote no
05:28 <bdale> !vote no
05:28 <cdlu> Ian, Joey?
05:28 * cdlu rolls eyes
05:28 <Joey> !vote no
05:29 <Hydroxide> IanJackson: can we presume you voted yes on your amendment?
05:29 <IanJackson> Hy: Yes.

ie, Ian's amendment (that electornic voting is harmful to the public
interest, and thus OVF shouldn't be accepted) failed with one vote in
favour, six votes against, and two board members not present (Branden,
with regrets as noted, and Mako).

The vote to accept OVF went on as:

05:30 <CosmicRay> is there a motion to vote on 2006-06-06.dbg.1?
05:30 <cdlu> so moved
05:30 * Hydroxide so moves
05:30 <bdale> seconded
05:30 <CosmicRay> !vote start
05:30 <Hydroxide> !vote no
05:30 <cdlu> !vote yes
05:30 <BrucePerens> !vote yes
05:30 <bdale> !vote yes
05:30 <IanJackson> !vote no
05:31 <CosmicRay> !vote yes
05:31 <Joey> !vote yes
05:31 <cdlu> Yes: 5, No: 2, Abstain: 0
05:31 <CosmicRay> !vote stop
05:32 <CosmicRay> 2006-06-06.dbg.1 has passed.
05:32 <slef> shame!
05:32 <CosmicRay> I believe that fully resolves this item, correct?
05:32 <IanJackson> slef: Not exactly helpful.
05:32 <IanJackson> CosmicRay: I think so, yes.

> I don't mean to re-open the debates on those subjects. I mention them
> because but one of the key roles of a board member is to vote on
> matters presented to the board for decision and I would like the
> SPI members to consider the likely voting behaviour of their
> candidates.

So with that leadup, here's my comment: to work well, it seems to
me that the members of a board/committee need to work well with each
other and have a reasonable amount of mutual respect even in the face
of disagreements. To me, that doesn't mean not having disagreements,
but it does mean:

- when you find your view isn't going to prevail, finding
compromises that mitigate (what you see as) the problems
in the prevailing viewpoint

- when you find your view is going to prevail, but other people
disagree with that view (possibly strongly) trying to find
ways to support their views

- trying to keep your disagreements respectful, not being
bitter about losing and bringing the issue back up all the
time, or impugning anything other than the highest of motives
to the people who disagree with you, and so on

> The discussion on opensource.org should have been held in public but
> was not. As a board member at the time I apologise for that failing -
> and as the eventually defeated chief opponent of the transfer I regret
> not enlisting the help of the membership.

So for me, this tends to cross the line into not really helpful
disagreements: the decision's been made, and while some people clearly
think that was the wrong decision, I think it's a long way off base
to imply that the membership had been on your side all along and
only failed to push your view over the line because they weren't
sufficiently involved. Particularly for the opensource.org issue,
I'm a bit more frustrated about that because back when OSI originally
split from SPI, SPI made a public call for comments on what should
be done about opensource.org and the potential open source trademark,
which was never either summarised in public or acted upon in any way,
and unless I'm misremembering that was at your initiative at the time,
and you've been a board member for the entire intervening period.

I guess that just starts looking to me like you're expecting other people
to treat your views with respect when you disagree -- and acknowledging
your dissent, holding debates in public and accepting the outcome of
votes, and so forth -- without doing the same when you're getting your
way, and other people disagree.

I'm not really sure how to summarise what I'm trying to say -- basically
I think it's good that you're standing up for your views, but they
seem to end up either winning or losing, and not going beyond that to
demonstrating how to deal with outlying opinions in a constructive,
inclusive way; and since I have been tending to disagree with your
views where they've differed from the majority of the board, to me,
that doesn't seem to be a useful contribution to the board.

I'd like to form that into a question, but I'm not sure how to say what
I mean well enough to do so. If you can see what I'm getting at, I'd be
interested in your response.

Cheers,
aj

On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 02:39:43PM -0700, Anthony Towns wrote:
> disagreements: the decision's been made, and while some people clearly
> think that was the wrong decision, I think it's a long way off base
> to imply that the membership had been on your side all along and
> only failed to push your view over the line because they weren't
> sufficiently involved.

For what it's worth, I didn't interpret the comment that way, and I
think it is in any case unhelpful at this point to start discussing
what could or could not have happened in some other possible world.
I ask everyone in the conversation to talk about some alternative
case if this is the sort of case we need to discuss. (I make that
request partly because there are significant disanalogies between
domain names and anything else that SPI might manage or control,
since ICANN's rules, as well as the applicable RRA, are involved with
domain names.)

Thanks,
A

--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca
The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens."
--Bruce Schneier

Andrew Sullivan writes ("Re: Second Call for nominations - 2007 SPI Board Election"):
> For what it's worth, I didn't interpret the comment that way, and I
> think it is in any case unhelpful at this point to start discussing
> what could or could not have happened in some other possible world.

I agree, and that's not how I meant it. I just wanted to express my
regret for my part in the failure to keep the membership properly
involved. I don't want to reopen those particular arguments; the
decisions have already been taken and implemented.

But I do think it's sensible to expect voting members to be influenced
by the way I and other board members voted. So it's appropriate to
draw those controversies to the attention of the voting members.
It seems to me that if as a candidate I didn't mention at all the two
high-profile items where I was heavily outvoted, I might reasonably be
accused of sweeping my defeats (or my kooky opinions, as others might
think of them) under the carpet.

I'm not sure whether the electorate is more or less likely to vote for
me as a result; I guess we'll find out.

Ian.