Voting rights - the GNOME way

[Harri Porten]

On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Vadim Plessky wrote:

> |  Criteria for voting rights will be an important factor and it doesn't hurt
> |  to look at what others do to verify eligibility. While we don't have (and
> |  maybe don't want) something like the GNOME foundation (with a board of
> |  directors) it may still useful to look at their criteria and procedures to
> |  have voting rights. After all we'd also like to have a forum with a fair
> |  representation of KDE members.
> 
> Isn't that KDE E.v. for?

Yes. But who should be a member and on what grounds does KDE e.V. have the
rights to administrate the kde.org domain for example ? Are you a member ?

> Frankly, I'd like to avoid any kind of *elections* or *politics* in KDE as 
> long as possible.
> I really enjoy KDE's non-political nature.

Not being a native English speaker I might have a different understanding 
of the word "political" so I'm not sure whether to agree with you or not.

I *do* want to see some ethics and guidelines in KDE. Many already exist
but they are often not expressed explicitly and therefore unclear to
existing and new members of the project. In some areas we definitely lack
an open, fair and transparent procedure. Like determining who the
next release manager will be. Or a decision about the inclusion of a new
icon theme. Settling such issues might require a formalized decision
making process. As little formal as possible, of course.

> |    http://foundation.gnome.org/membership-policy.html
> 
> Recent threads on <kde-cafe> demonstrated, that while KDE developer community 
> (and long-time KDE users) is quite stable, many people have quite different 
> opinions on "real life" issues (like politics, religion, etc.).
> We will face all those issues immediately, if we go for "KDE  
> committee/board".

I wasn't after a board. I just point to an example of "how to assign
voting rights" definition. See above for examples why this might be
required.

> Are you sure that we would be able to overcome those issues?

It would actually be a top priority to emphasise that KDE is agnostic 
of any religion and politics - or the contrary. But to find that out you
have to somehow find out what others think about this issue, no ? And on
what basis do you make this the "official" KDE statement ? Make a Slashdot
poll ?

> I am not so confident in this.

This list is the right place to express your doubts :)

Harri.