Re: PostgreSQL Europe statutes : recap

On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 10:53:25AM +0100, Koen Martens wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 06:03:17PM +0100, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 20, 2008 at 05:53:56AM +0100, damien clochard wrote:
> > > 3- Quorum ?
> > > a : Keep the statutes as they are
> > > b : Lower the quorum
> > > c : Drop the quorum
> >
> > Having a quorum is a nice thing, especially if you discuss and decide
> > "hot" topics. In this case a quorum makes sense. For everything else we
> > have the fallback with a second meeting without quorum.
> > So why dropping or lowering he quorum?
>
> Because it is very likely that you don't get a quorum _ever_ on GA's. As
> explained, I expect that you will have such a second GA where the quorum
> is dropped most of the times anyway, so it is more practical to drop it.

Yes, it's annoying, but that's democracy.
You don't drop elections at all just because you know in advance that no
candidate will have a quorum. You make a first vote and then pick the
two best candidates and have a second ballot.

> Obviously, for 'hot' topics ('shall we dismantle') the quorum should be
> there, yes.

Who defines, what is a "hot" topic?
If the board announces that we vote about rising the membership fee,
maybe the topic is interesting enough that enough ppl show up the first
time. If not, we get the chance to decide anyway.

> Again, it is just my experience with how these kind of international
> organisations work out in reality. Maybe PGEU is different, and you will
> have all those members show up at the GA. I really doubt it though.

I'm also in doubt, but that's no reason at all to remove democratic
principles. Otherwise we don't need a user group at all and can just go
with the board of directors.

> > > 4- Takeover protection ?
> > > a : Keep statutes as they are
> > > b : Add more criterium for the member to satisfy
> >
> > As long as only people from EU can "take over", i don't care much. From
> > germany i know, that the member base in an association can be replaced
> > in 2 or 3 years. People join and leave or just join and never leave and
> > new people come and do the work.
>
> Letting my fantasy go here: it could also be, say, oracle that wants to
> frustrate the postgresql eu activities and thus enlists all its
> employeees to sign up right before a GA where something crucial is going
> to be decided and force the vote.
>
> Do we care about such a scenario? However unlikely it may be, things
> like this can happen.

And? How should we avoid this scenario? If this happens, ok. In this
case not even a quorum helps.

Bye

--
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
German PostgreSQL User Group