On Wed, 13 Sep 2006, Bryce Harrington wrote:
Hi all,
We've reached the signing stage of getting Inkscape accepted into the Software Freedom Conservancy [1].
In the Sponsorship Agreement we've specified that people in the AUTHORS file are eligible to vote. Beyond that the election process is up to us.
As someone only recently included in the AUTHORS file I would hope there will be some room for other stakeholders to petition to be included in the electorate (or added to the AUTHORS file as needed). Someone writing a documentation for example could be contributing many more hours into Inkscape than AUTHORS who may no longer be active. I understand you have to draw a line somewhere and the AUTHORS file is a good basis but I think there are contributions which you may also want to acknowledge so I'm just saying this now to make sure you dont rule out appeals.
Does this sound like an okay process? Ideas on improving it?
I always preferred the principle of single transferrable vote (STV) as it results in the least objectionable candidate getting elected. They say precedent is 9/10 of the law[1], and whatever is set now is unlikely to be changed so I do hope you will at least briefly consider it.
Software could help keep the process managable, anyone ever used the Gnu.Free voting software? http://www.free-project.org/users/
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
Inkscape http://inkscape.org Abiword http://www.abisource.com Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
[1] No need to embarass yourselves by trying to explain I got the expression wrong. I realise it is a corruption of another better known expression but British law is all about precedent.