On jeu. 05 juin 2025 09:51:45, Christian Ehrhardt wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 5, 2025 at 8:54 AM Robie Basak <robie.basak@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 11:08:57AM +0100, Robie Basak wrote:
> > > Providing at least six valid nominations are received, voting
> > > shall commence on 2025-06-12 and shall last for approximately seven
> > > days, ending on or around 2025-06-19.
> >
> > We've had four nominations out of the six required for a meaningful
> > vote, so I'm postponing the election schedule for the time being.
> >
> > Getting enough volunteers has been a struggle for a number of years now.
> > Resignations and absentees have also caused considerable difficulties in
> > making decisions, as the DMB requires a simple majority of all board
> > members to make most decisions.
> >
> > In recent elections the electorate had the option to exclude a
> > particular candidate by choosing the "No further candidates" option[1]
> > But it had never executed this option in practice. With fewer volunteers
> > than seats, this is the only function of the election that would remain
> > in practice. It seems unnecessary to make everyone to go through the
> > whole thing just for that.
> >
> > So I wonder if it's worth continuing with elections at all? What if the
> > Technical Board were to just appoint DMB members as they felt
> > appropriate with a simple announcement, inviting prospective members to
> > apply to the TB directly?
> >
> > We'd rely on the TB's judgement, but the TB is elected by the same body
> > so fundamentally we'd still be selecting DMB members, just indirectly.
> >
> > If volunteers were to increase in number in the future, we could go back
> > to the election process.
> >
> > Here's a concrete proposal:
> >
> > 1. No more DMB elections for now, including this one.
> >
> > 2. The DMB remains at a nominal seven seats.
> >
> > 3. When the DMB needs members, the TB will ask for suitably qualified
> > volunteers to apply privately.
> >
> > 4. The TB reserves their option to exclude particular volunteers
> > (privately), but this should only happen under exceptional
> > circumstances.
> >
> > 5. The TB announces new appointments which can therefore happen at any
> > time.
> >
> > 6. We'd like DMB members to commit to a two year minimum, but DMB
> > members can resign at any time, as before. In practice, given we have a
> > shortage of volunteers, they'll stay for as long as they continue to
> > volunteer.
> >
> > 7. If the TB finds that they consistently have more volunteers than
> > seats, they expect to switch back to the election system.
> >
> > 8. We send the current list of nominations to the TB for their
> > consideration.
>
> I agree that we should not follow process for process sake.
> As you said, with less candidates than seats what really is the point?
> And with your proposal they would indeed still be indirectly elected.
> +1 to the proposal from me.
>
> I do not know the ruling/processing, would the decision to switch need
> to be an election itself?
> Or is that something that can be discussed here and then decided by
> the TB to make it official?
The precise delegation path that led to the DMB having the powers it had
today is hard to figure out, but at least its most technically powerful
right — managing the Core Dev team — was handled by the TB before,
according to https://ubuntu-news.org/2009/12/09/call-for-nominations-ubuntu-developer-membership-board/
For me, that makes a simple vote from the current TB enough to enact any
change regarding the way the DMB works.
FWIW, I tend to agree that as long as we don't have enough volunteers to
have a meaningful election, we should skip the overhead of organizing
one.
Cheers,
Simon
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