Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [Tech-board-discuss] Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board Elections -- Change to charter

Bird, Tim
2020-03-13T17:30:23Z

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Bottomley
>
> On Fri, 2020-03-13 at 17:08 +0200, Jani Nikula wrote:
> > On Fri, 13 Mar 2020, "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> > > On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 04:10:29PM +0200, Jani Nikula wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Have you considered whether the eligibility for running and
> > > > voting should be made the same? As it is, absolutely anyone can
> > > > self-nominate and run.
> > >
> > > That's always been the case. However, at least historically,
> > > people who weren't physically present has never been successful.
> >
> > Oh? May I ask for that to be clarified in the TAB charter, please.
>
> It's a historical observation, not a rule. In fact, it does have an
> exception: GregKH was elected in Edinburgh in 2012 without being
> physically present at the voting (although he was in Edinburgh at the
> time).

I was elected in Prague in 2017. I was onsite, but had a conflict so
was not present for the vote. So it's happened, but it has been rare
for someone to be elected while not present at the vote. I'll be honest.
The fact that ELC was co-located with the kernel summit that year
probably had a lot to do with my win. IMHO it would be nice
to reduce the effect of the event pairing on the elections, so I really
welcome the movement to absentee voting (even though it helped
me once :-) ).

With regard to clarifying it for transparency, I think that would be good.
We have customarily sent out a request for nominations by e-mail
prior to the kernel summit. I don't recall the wording, but I think
the nomination instructions included the information that you didn't
need to be present to run. If I'm mis-remembering this and it's not
there, it would be good to add it.
-- Tim