Re: Draft bylaws are now available

On Tue, 2008-06-10 at 08:50 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Josh,
>
> > Election in October 08 for four two year terms
> > Board members who are elected in October 08 take their seat at the
> > Annual meeting.
>
> Why two year terms? I liked the one-year terms based on our SPI
> experience ... people's participation (including yours and mine)

In the case of you and I, I don't think that is an accurate
representation. A more accurate account would be that you were unable to
participate as much as you had planned for a number of reasons:

1. Sun had you bouncing all over the world and thus completely
eliminated your time to participate in SPI and PostgreSQL.Org (for that
matter) for a year.

2. The responsibilities you had with SPI turned out to be a hairball
that nobody saw coming, from a really old nasty cat that had one leg,
was missing half its hair and hated everyone.

As far as myself, my participation has not waned, I am unfortunately
still waiting on the treasurer (for those watching, that isn't Josh
anymore) to finish what he said he would finish months ago.

> tends to
> drop off the second year.

I don't know that, that is true honestly. I believe it depends highly on
the goals of the corporation and the people involved. Consider that SPI
is lead by primarily Debian people, and thus when they are working on
Debian they (my perception) likely feel they are doing their job on
Board.

There will always be dead weight on a board because there are dead
weight people. However if we make sure and vet the board publicly,
honestly and aggressively (public debate at West, specific questions
etc..) I believe we have a better opportunity to keep a lively and
productive board.

Remember that unlike SPI, many of the people that will be part of the
board here, likely make their living in one way shape or form from
PostgreSQL. That means board members will have a vested interest in the
actual success of the corporation.

In answer to the two year term question. I find that the most
appropriate middle ground. There are long term projects we have and will
have in play that need solid points of contact. It will add to stability
of the corporation, which is important.

Lastly, outside of using SPI as a model not to follow (it just isn't
appropriate for what the PGUS goals are) I don't know that it is fair to
do the comparison. Yes you and I have a lot of experience with it and I
am using that experience as a learning tool on this as well as my
experience running CMD. We have a much better focus.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake