Re: PostgreSQL Europe statutes : recap

On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 01:08:20PM +0100, damien clochard wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 January 2008 10:53:25 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.
> >
> > Obviously, for 'hot' topics ('shall we dismantle') the quorum should be
> > there, yes.
> >
> > 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.
> >
>
> Maybe we can use a practical example to figure out how that quorum thing
> works...
>
> Let's imagine a GA meeting where only 10% of the members are present or
> represented . Theses 10% are very stupid guys . They want to use all the
> money of the association to buy something useless ( a billion of human-size
> plush elephants ). One of them proposes the stupid and useless idea , the GA
> votes and says "yes".

Now, human-size plush elephants sounds like a great idea. But if we can
afford a billion of them, let's buy Sun instead ;-)

> 1/ What if no quorum is needed ? Well the decision is set in stone. We cannot
> go back. As the GA is the most powerful entity of the association, the board
> of directors will have to obey and execute the GA decision. The Association
> buys a billion of plush elephants and we're broke.
>
> 2/ What if a quorum of 30% is needed ? the GA took a decision but the quorum
> has not been reached. The decision is not valid yet and Board of Directors
> doesn't have to execute it. An e-mail is sent to every members explaining
> what decision the GA wanted to vote . Another GA is proposed at least 7 days
> after and within 30 days. This second GA will have no quorum required of
> course, but it will leaves us some time to discuss and prepare the second
> voting. This second GA can happen over IRC and/or e-mail voting can be
> allowed so that every members can participate. The majority of the members
> refuse the decision. Billion of human-size plush elephants go elsewhere.
>
> In the first case, a minority can easily takeover the association, in the
> other we all have a few days ( between 7 and 30 ) to wake up and block the
> stupid and useless decisions.
>
> To me this quorum thing only implies that we need a second GA, which is just
> some kind of a simple validation of the first one.

It does make sense. As long as there is the fallback so that we don't have
to keep calling new GAs over and over and over again. If it's just a
one-step fallback, that's fine.

OTOH, it pretty much makes it *impossible* for an in-person GA to ever make
a decision - it will always fallback to a secondary one, and that one is
not likely to be in-person but online instead. But that's probably not
entirely unreasonable.

//Magnus