Re: [Tech-board-discuss] Re: Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board Elections

[Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 04:43:58PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
 > >  > The elections for five of the ten members of the Linux Foundation
 > >  > Technical Advisory Board[TAB] are held every year, currently the
 > >  > election will be at the 2007 Kernel Summit in a BOF session.
 > >  > 
 > >  > Anyone is eligible to stand for election, simply send your nomination
 > >  > to:
 > >  > 
 > >  > Tech-board-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org
 > >  > 
 > >  > Only people invited to the kernel summit will be there in person (and
 > >  > therefore able to vote), but if you cannot attend, your nomination email
 > >  > will be read out before the voting begins.
 > >  > 
 > >  > We currently have Three nominees:
 > >  > 
 > >  > Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>
 > >  > Greg Kroah Hartman <greg@kroah.com>
 > >  > Christoph Lameter <christoph@lameter.com>
 > >  > 
 > >  > The deadline for receiving nominations is up until the BOF where the
 > >  > election is held (on the evening of either the 5th or 6th of September.
 > >  > Although, please remember if you're not going to be present that things
 > >  > go wrong with both networks and mailing lists, so get your nomination in
 > >  > early).
 > > 
 > > I have a reservation about voting for any of the above.
 > > Normally during any process involving votes, there exists some sort
 > > of "why you should vote for me" type statement.  Does such a thing
 > > exist for this process ?
 > > 
 > > Not that I've anything against any of the above candidates, but this
 > > should probably be more than just a popularity contest.
 > 
 > Yes ... well, there was a need to get away from the cronyism of OSDL in
 > the past.  The problem was to come up with a mechanism that did away
 > with this.  The elected one was about the best we could find, but if
 > you've an alternative suggestion, by all means let's hear it.

Possibly I'm confused about the actual role that these nominees are
running for.  If it's a rigid position in which they don't get to
do anything outside of a specific mandate, then any of the above
would be qualified to represent the kernel community.

However, if there's flexability for a candidate to bring something
new to the position, an online statement from each nominee _Before_ 
the voting begins declaring what they intend to do should they get elected.
Reading out the statement before the summit and also asking people
to vote before that happens seems a little disingenuous.

Can you explain more about what the succesful candidate would actually
do for me, and why I (and others) would want to vote one way or the other?

	Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk