Why not a second turn?

Being a board member (present at almost every conference call, reading the mailing lists and other task) consume free time. It has increased during the last semester too. And we’ve got some new business opportunities here at Ioda-Net Sàrl in 2015, and those need also my attention for the next year(s). I prefer to be a retired Board member, than not being able to handle my responsabilities.
But I’m not against the idea of a "I’ll be back" in a near future. Moreover with a bit more bandwidth in my free time, I will be able to continue my packaging stuff, and other contributions.

What a journey!

With the new campaign running, I found funny to bring back to light my 2013 platform written 2 years ago. And spent 5 minutes on checking the differences with today. I’m inviting you to discover the small interview between me and myself

1. Which sentences would you say again today?

I’m a "Fucking Green Dreamer" of a world of collaboration, which will one day offer Freedom for everyone.

Clearly still a day by day mantra and leitmotiv. But even if I’m dreaming, I never forget that
Freedom has a price : Freedom will only be what you do for it.

2. Which thing you would not say again, or differently ?

Well, as there’s no joker card, let’s start by this one:
"A Visible Active Board > A Visible Active Project." With the experience and time, and interaction, (the one who said fight, get out please :-)), I would said this is not as easy as it sound first.
I’m pretty sure, I was more quieter since I was on the board, than before. Because it’s too hard to make a clear distinction, when you just want to express something as "a simple contributor": you are on the board, and then whatever you can try to trick the fact: you’re still a board member.

So making the Board visible like a kind of communicant Alien, will certainly not improve that much our project.
It’s written everywhere, almost everybody agree, the board is not the lighthouse in the dark showing you the future.
Anyone, I repeat, anyone in this community is a potential vector of a future for openSUSE.

So in my past platform "Guardians of the past, Managers of the present, Creators of the future." I would replace Creators of the future by kinda "enabler"

3. In the last 2 years, where did openSUSE mostly evolve?

I think we moved from a traditional way of building distribution to some creative alternative, the rolling but tested Tumbleweed, and the hybrid Leap are really good things that happened.
I believe that if we have also some hard time on mailing list, which are exhausting, they also have a positive aspect (yeap:-)). If we fight, then it’s certainly because of our faith in something. Is this one defined? Not sure! But I’m pretty convinced that all members around have a good image of it.

4. What would be an advice to your successor (even if he doesn’t care about it)?

We are a tooling community, we love tools. Beware of one thing, if you get hurt by a tool, you can become the worst asshole you’ve never met. With tools, you can also hurt other people.

My advise, watch your step and keystroke!

5. Something more you would like to share?

I’ve invested time and energy during 2014 and beginning of 2015, to run booth, talks, represent openSUSE’s project all around. It was awesome to go to those events and meet people, involved or interested about openSUSE.

Perhaps some of you don’t know, but we have friends all around us, in many communities, and when the magic about working together appears, it just blast my heart.

Thanks for reading and for your support during this period

Truly green yours

Elections and voting are a rather remarkable thing.  We take up or values, our beliefs, our interests, and briefly toss them in the air, letting the air flow somewhat disrupt them as they gently fall like leaves.  We think for a moment: What’s important to me?  Why is this important to me?  And does it really matter who I vote for?  Can a small Board of Directors really make a difference in the larger scheme of things?  Can the elected person really represent my interests?

In American politics, there is much apathy for and little trust in elections.  There are many reasons for this (and it’s a topic for discussion and reflection saved for a very different forum).  But as much analysis is done by professionals who analyze these things, they often conclude that each individual doesn’t think that one vote will matter.  “I’m just one person in an ocean of people; how will my vote matter?”  But for us, well, no one knows better about Freedom and Openness than an opensource community.  Voting — expressing one’s confidence in another person to serve as a representative of an ideal, a promise — is a hallmark of Freedom and Openness.  If only one vote is cast among many, then the ideal of only the one is expressed.  If your vote is not cast and the others of your community are, then your voice is diminished.  When a whole community votes, the full range voices is heard and discerned.

Vote.  Our community is strengthened when your vote is cast.  Whether or not you vote for me, please vote.

I believe it matters.

The election ends on Monday, 26 Jan 2015.

This post is a summary of my wish to continue to serve on your behalf on the openSUSE board.

My term has been a short one, as I was appointed to serve out the remainder of Vincent Untz’ term.

While I now work for SUSE (and it has been a fabulous experience), that does not change my view or efforts to contribute to openSUSE.  Prior to joining SUSE, as a part of the Sales Engineering team, I was elected to the board for a two year term. To avoid having too many SUSE employees, I had to step down.  A rule I completely support.

Having been an openSUSE member long before joining SUSE, I think I have a keen awareness of what the community is about and where we can improve together.

My take is we have an awesome group of contributors who want to see the community grow and prosper.  With things like Tumbleweed and OBS, among others, we have shown real innovation and technical leadership in the Linux world. We have arguably one the top distros available.  It is solid, polished and usable for a wide variety of use cases. We need to keep the openness and solid collaboration which enables everyone to participate and succeed.

My efforts within openSUSE have been mostly focused on the Open Build Server, maintaining several projects, as well as, being part of the Factory review team.

Going forward, I want to concentrate on reaching out beyond our community to build more awareness of what an awesome distro we have, along with a pretty friendly community. I see other, less compelling, distros getting more visibility than perhaps is deserved.

Along the same lines, my take is we as a community can take a more active role in bringing in new members, who might not be technical folks, but can help in the marketing and outreach. I’ve started a local SUSE group through meetup.com which is a different way to find new users and contributors.

One other reason I wish to remain on the board, is we have a solid working relationship and there is a lot of mutual respect and good collaboration.

No matter who is elected to the board, I am very pleased with the caliber of the folks running and know the community will be in good hands moving forward.

Thank you in advance for your vote!

Peter Linnell

It’s campaign season, and time for me to make sure all voters know what I stand for regarding openSUSE, “The Finest Distro, Period.”  As I mentioned in my announcement, if elected to The Board, my intended involvement would focus on these three principle goals:

A) Improving the visibility of openSUSE among the huge variety of distro offerings that exist. Specifically, improving the amount of press and exposure of openSUSE to offset the over-represented exposure that other distros receive.  Since openSUSE is the The Finest Distro, Period (as I asserted above), we can do better to make it known.

B) Promote openQA, and make it the bedrock of quality assurance for openSUSE. Improve the confidence that the community and the public should have in the quality of our great product! The Quality of openSUSE — out of the box, and updated over the wire, over time — is dependent upon a battery of high quality testing. Perception is everything in this business. Great testing will give us great quality, great results, and great users.

C) Support the improvements that have been incrementally made over time by prior board members, building on their successes. There are too many accomplishments to enumerate here, but the project has come a long way under some great leadership. We don’t need huge changes in leadership or direction; we need to capitalize on our prior successes and press forward.

And I wish to add one more goal to my original list:

D) Continue to foster community involvement and attract new talent to the project through high quality openSUSE Conferences. Bringing together the best talent to oSC events does a great deal to build bridges of trust and move the project forward in a unified way. A high quality oSC improves the quality of the brand and the product.

But of course, the few members of the Board are just a small functioning part of a successful community. The real success of openSUSE is a result of the hard work, the passion, and commitment of the members. As a member of the board, I intend to be someone who brings out the best in others; to help you do what you do best; to bring good people together fo the strength of the project. openSUSE is “The Finest Distro, Period,” only because its contributors are The Finest. Period.

As the polls open in a few days, please vote for Craig Gardner (@ganglia). You’ll get a firmly committed member of the board, who wants to help you — the community — to find even greater success.  And don’t forget to have fun.

With the end of 2014 my first term on the openSUSE board is already coming to an end, time flies. During my first term we collectively have seen many changes to our project. Many of these changes were difficult and I would say we had a rough ride for a good chunk of th last 2 years. I think, and am hoping others agree, that I was able to help smooth some of the rough spots and help the project move into what could now be considered calmer waters. It was not easy, but I am glad I was able to contribute.

Since 2009 I work for SUSE in the ISV Engineering team. When I started I primarily worked with IBM on joint projects. I also worked with other ISVs helping them with questions regarding their application on top of SUSE Linux. In recent years my role has transitioned and I am now focused on Public Cloud work, working with our partners.

I have been using SUSE Linux, now known as the openSUSE distribution since the beginning, i.e. I still remember when SUSE Linux 10 was released. I have been contributing to the project for many years, not from the get go, it took me some time to move from user to contributor, by maintaining packages, more recently also maintaining and publishing openSUSE images in the public cloud, and helping with organization of events. For the past two years I also had the privilege to contribute to the project as a board member. I would very much enjoy being able to continue my contribution to the board for another 2 years.

Looking forward I see the need that an effort needs to be made to re-invigorate our project. As a whole the distribution “business” has lost some of its appeal and shine. Something that is certainly to be expected. Never the less even in a world that is getting more and more dominated by cloud services, containers, and whatever else, distributions are a necessity and the openSUSE distributions always stands out as one of the top notch community distributions. We have also proven that there is still plenty of innovation potential with the recent merge of Tumbleweed and Factory, turning what was previously a pure development stream into a usable rolling release. The credit for this of course goes to the Factory team, release team and many others that contributed to the new tools and backend infrastructure that make all this possible. Re-invigoration for me not only means being proud and excited about such major technical accomplishments but also means we need to be better organized when it comes the representation of our project at FOSS events. Although the new booth box material is great we have had a difficult time getting things organized and helping those that want to represent the project at events. I want to continue to push on this part and help make the distribution of material better. There is plenty of work to be done at the board level and I am asking for your vote in the upcoming election to allow me to continue what is already in the works and help start new initiatives to re-invigorate our project.

Thank you, Merci, Danke etc..

I’m deeply touched, now the time of let’s begin the fun has come.
Be assured to my strong commitment in our project and community.

See you on earth!

Read more at my platform page. Then go and vote!

I’d like to thank David that did the major editing on this one.
What do you think? Are we good now to run the next elections with these rules?

openSUSE Board Election Rules

Policy

Size:

The board consists of six members: five seats are elected by the community and a chairperson is appointed.

Term:

The openSUSE board term is two years.

Chairperson:

To provide continuity to the organization, the chairperson shall be appointed and replaced at Novell’s discretion.

Election period:

The election period is normally from 1^st January to the following 31^st December.

Company affiliation:

To help ensure that the board will always represent a wide part of the community, no single organization or company can control more than 40 per cent of the elected or appointed board seats.

Good faith:

Members of the openSUSE board shall act on behalf of all openSUSE contributors in the best interest of the openSUSE project. Although board members may be affiliated with companies or organizations that have an interest in the success of openSUSE, they will not be considered representatives of the companies or organizations with which they are affiliated.

Procedure

Voting

Only openSUSE members may vote, each member having one ballot that has one vote per seat to be elected.

The eligible candidates who receive the most votes fill the vacant seats.

Election Committee:

The election is run by an Election Committee that consists of at least three openSUSE members. The Election Committee is appointed for each election by the board.

Constitution:

A new board’s term should start on the first of January, the elections should be finished 14 days before. In the case of delays, the new board will start 7 days after the election results are published.

Appointed board members or members elected during ad-hoc election will start 7 days after appointment or election results are published.

Nominations:

The election committee will take self-nominations, nominations by others and can nominate people for election. The election committee will contact the nominated people and ask them whether they are willing to stand for election. These nominations are private until accepted by the nominated people.

Insufficient Nominations:

In the event that the number of eligible candidates is less than or equal to the number of vacant seats, the voting period will be delayed by two weeks. A public message will be sent out to ask again for candidates.

In the event that the number of eligible candidates is still less than or equal to the number of available seats, voting occurs as normal but each candidate needs to have more than 50 per cent yes votes to be elected.

Tie:

In the event of a tie for the final seat(s) on the board, the election committee will schedule run-off elections between the tied candidates within one week, with a voting period of one week to resolve the tie.

In the event of a tie during the run-off elections, the newly elected board – or the previous board, if fewer than 50 per cent of the seats have been filled – will appoint candidates running in the run-off elections to fill the vacant seats.

Renewal:

Approximately half of the board is elected every year. This means that every year, the term of approximately half of the board ends, and the term of the other half ends the year after.

If there have been resignations or removals since the last elections, the term for the new board members will be adjusted if necessary to ensure that half of the elected board seats – that means at least two and no more than three out of five – will have to be filled during the next elections.

To implement this adjustment, the elected board members with the most votes will have a two years term, while the elected board members with the lowest votes will have a one year term. The number of seats with the lowest votes is calculated so that two of the board seats will have to be filled during the next election

Appointment:

The sitting board is allowed to appoint new members to fill a board vacancy caused by one of the following conditions: 1) resignation of a Board member or 2) the removal of a Board member, or 3) death of a Board member, or 4) as part of elections if not enough people are elected.

In the case that some seats do not get filled at an election, the new board will appoint board members as necessary until the next election.

Ad-hoc elections:

Instead of opting to appoint more than one board member, the board may opt to call for new board elections for the vacant seats. These board members will then be elected for the current election period and the next period – thus until 31^st of December of the next year.

Eligibility and Validity

Eligible candidates:

Only openSUSE members may stand for election and be elected to the Board.

Election committee:

None of the Election Committee can run for or be elected as an openSUSE board member while serving on the Election Committee.

Eligible voters:

Only openSUSE members may vote.

Resignation

Any person who has resigned from the Board or has been removed from the Board is not eligible for nomination or appointment for or during the next Board election period.

Restanding:

openSUSE board members can serve for up to two consecutive election periods. After that they must stand down for at least one election period, but may run again after the one election period break.

Appointed members:

Appointed board members are required to stand down and might seek election at the next election.

Company affiliation:

In the event that individuals affiliated with a company or organization hold more than 40 per cent of the elected or appointed seats, affiliates from that corporation will be required to resign until fewer than 40 per cent of elected or appointed seats are controlled by that company or organisation.

Individuals affiliated with a company or organization are people who are employees, officers, or members of the board of directors of an organization; or have a significant consulting relationship; or own at least 1 per cent of the equity or debt, or derivatives thereof, of a company.

Affiliation during election:

A candidate is not eligible to be voted onto the board if their election would mean that a company or organization hold more than 40 per cent of the elected or appointed seats. In this case their election and these votes are void.

Other Rules

Removal of Chairperson:

The elected board members can appeal to Novell to have the chairperson replaced.

Resignation:

A member of the board may resign their current position by giving written notice to the chairperson. The board should appoint a new board member or call elections to fill the vacancy.

Removal:

In the event of repeated absence without contact, or other serious misconduct or negligence, a Board member may be subject to removal. Before any other process occurs, the Board member in question will be personally contacted by the chairperson to try to resolve the situation. If this contact does not successfully resolve the situation, the Board member in question may be removed by a vote of 2/3s of the other board members. The board should appoint a new board member or call elections to fill the vacancy.

Repeated absence includes missing three consecutive board meetings without sending regrets, not answering emails on the board mailing list for more than a month, or missing more than 10 meetings.

Forced re-election:

If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.

Amendment:

Changes by the election rules can be made by vote of the board where 2/3s or more approve it including the chairperson or by vote of the membership where 2/3 or more of the openSUSE members participating in the vote approve it.

So, now the goal of the changes for these rules are:

• Fill the holes that exist in the existing rules
• Clarify the existing rules
• Open up the project even more with removing the restriction on two members beeing Novell employees.  To help ensure that the board will always represent a wide part of the community, I’ve followed the example of the GNOME foundation to have a rule that only 40 % of the elected board members can work at the same company.
  Note that 40 % of 5 elected seats means 2 seats.

I’d like to thank Vincent Untz and Alan Clark who helped me with this revision step.

Below is the new draft, for reference I gave each rule a name.

I’d like to hear now whether those complete rules are fine or where they need further revision and I’d also like to see wordsmithing to clarify and improve the rules.

Complete rules for openSUSE Board Elections

• Size: The board consists of six members: five seats are elected by the community and additionally an appointed chairperson.
• Eligible candidates: Only openSUSE members may run for the Board.
  Any previous board member that has previously resigned or has been previously removed from the Board is not eligible for nomination or appointment for or within the next Board election period.
• Eligible voters: Only openSUSE members may vote, each member having one ballot that has one vote per seat to be elected.
• Election Committee: The election is run by an Election Committee that consists of at least three openSUSE members and gets appointed for each election by the board. None of the Election Committee can run for or be elected as an openSUSE board member while serving on the Election Committee.
• Time length: The openSUSE board term is two years. Approximately half of the board is elected every year. This means that every year, the term of approximately half of the board ends, and the term of the other half ends the year after.
  To provide continuity to the organization the chairperson shall be appointed and replaced at Novell’s discretion.  The elected board members can appeal to Novell to have the chairperson replaced.
• Yearly electing half the board: In case of resignations or removals occured since last elections, the term for elected board members for the current elections will be adjusted to make sure that half of the elected board seats – that means two out of five – will have to be filled during the next elections.
  To implement this adjustment, the elected seats with the most votes will have a two years term, while the seats with the lowest votes will have a one year term. The number of seats with the lowest votes is calculated so that half of the board seats will have to be filled during the next elections.
• Serving time: openSUSE board members can serve for up to two consecutive election periods. After that they must stand down for at least one year, but may be run again after the one year break.
• Resignation: A member of the board may resign their current position by giving written notice to the chairperson.
• Removal: In the event of repeated absence without contact, or other serious misconduct or negligence, a Board member may be subject to removal. Before any other process occurs, the Board member in question will be personally contacted by the chairperson to try to resolve the situation. If this contact does not successfully resolve the situation, the Board member in question may be removed by a vote of 2/3s of the board members. The board should appoint a new board member.
  Repeated absence includes missing three consecutive board meetings without sending regrets, not answering at all to emails or sending regrets for more than 10 meetings.
• Appointment: The running board is allowed to appoint new members during their term to fill a board vacancy caused by one of the following conditions: 1) Resignation of a Board member or 2) the removal of a Board member, or 3) as part of elections.
  Appointed seats are only appointed until the next election.
  Instead of opting to appointmore than one board member, the board may opt to call for a new board election for the vacant seats.
• Company affiliation: To help ensure that the board will always represent a wide part of the community, no single organization or company will be allowed to control more than 40% of the elected or appointed board seats, regardless of election results. In the event that individuals affiliated with a corporation or organization hold more than 40% of the seats, affiliates from that corporation will be required to resign until 40% is no longer held.
• Individuals affiliated with a company or organization are people who are employees, officers, or members of the board of directors of an organization; or have a significant consulting relationship; or own at least 1% of the equity or debt, or derivatives thereof, of a company.
  Notwithstanding the above, members of the openSUSE board shall act on behalf of all openSUSE contributors in the best interest of the openSUSE project. Although board members may be affiliated with companies that have an interest in the success of openSUSE, they will not be considered representatives of companies with which they are affiliated.
• Affiliation during election: If more than 40 % of the elected seats would be affiliated with one company (as defined above), elections results shall be adjusted as follows. Individuals who are affiliated with the company which has an excess of representatives shall be removed based on the number of votes they received until such individuals no longer hold a majority of the seats on the board. Other candidates shall replace them, based on the number of votes they received.
• Nominations: The election committee will take self-nominations, nominations by others and can nominate people for election.  The election committee will contact the nominated people and ask them whether they stand for election.  These nominations are private until accepted by the nominated people.
• Insufficient Nominations: In the event that the number of eligible candidates is less than or equal to the number of available seats, the voting period will be delayed by two weeks.  A public message will be sent out to ask again for candidates.
  In the event that the number of eligible candidates is less than or equal to the number of available seats, voting occurs as normal but each candidate needs to have more than 50 per cent yes votes. In case that seats do not get elected, the new board will appoint them.
• Constitution: A new board term should start on the first of January, the elections should be finished 14 days before.  In the case of delays, the new board will start 7 days after the election results are published.
• Tie: In the event of a tie for the final slot on the board, the election committee will schedule run-off elections between the tied candidates within one week, with a voting period of one week to resolve the tie.
  In the event of a tie during the run-off elections, the newly elected board – or the previous board, if all seats are to be filled during the run-off elections – will appoint candidates running in the run-off elections to fill the remaining slots.
• Forced reelection: If 20 per cent of the openSUSE members require a new board election, an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats.
• Amendment: Changes by the election rules can be done by vote of the board where 2/3s approve it including the chairperson or by vote of the membership where 2/3 of the openSUSE members approve it.

Open Question

From Vincent: Should we move to some “smarter” voting mechanism. The GNOME Foundation switched to STV [1][2], and I must admit it feels more “right”, when voting. This would need some change in the voting software, though.

References

• Fedora Project
• Jono Bacon in The Art of community management
• GNOME Foundation rules and charter
• Current openSUSE board election rules

I see the following situations not handled:

• Less candidates than seats for a category (Novell/non-Novell)
• Equal number of candidates and open seats for a category (Novell/non-Novell)
• a board member resigning
• a board member disappearing and not engaging in the board
• a board member getting hired by Novell or leaves Novell

We also need to clarify when the new board constitutes.

We should have a light weight process that is not overly complex and results in endless votes. We vote for people that volunteer their time for the openSUSE project and don’t get any material benefits for it. So, let’s keep that in mind when discussing alternatives.

Also, currently the board has five elected seats (three non-Novell and two Novell) that get elected, so it could be that we have enough non-Novell candidates but not enough Novell ones etc. To make this text easier, I will not mention this everytime.

I have a first proposal before discussing the situations: The board should be allowed to appoint people to board seats until the next board constitutes.

The alternative would be to have a special election when a seat becomes empty. I fear that this just overly complicates the process.

New rule: Appointment: In case that board seats will get appointed, they get appointed by the board.  Appointed seats are only appointed until the next election.  The board can appoint also non-Novell folks on Novell seats and vice-versa.

I suggest also to not only have self-nominations but that people can nominate others – and the election officials will then ask the nominated person whether they stand up for election.

New rule: Nominations: The election officials will take self-nominations, nominations by others and can nominate people for election.  The election officials will contact the nominated people and ask them whether they stand for election.

Insufficient Nominations:

This is a sorry state since it means that not enough openSUSE members are willing to volunteer for the board. In that case, the board should appoint people to join the board and it can put Novell employees on non-Novell seats and vice-versa. With the next election, the seat distribution would be fixed again.

New rule: Insufficient Nominations: If there are fewer nominees for elected Board seats than required to fill all seats, than the board will appoint these remaining seats.

The question remains what to do with the candidates that volunteer, let’s handle them in the next case:

Equal number of candidates and seats

One option here is to just declare the candidates as new board members.  This would be the simplest process.

In other situations, you have a vote of confidence where people give a yes/no vote for the candidates.

One suggestion is a yes/no/abstain vote for the candidates and a candidate needs more yes than no votes to be elected.  If somebody does not get elected, the seat gets appointed (see insufficient nominations).
Since it could happen that one category has enough nominations but not the other, the voting would be different for both categories and this makes the whole process complicated.  So, I suggest to change the rule to have just more than 50 per cent yes votes.

New rule: Equal number of candidates of seats: If there is an equal number of candidates and seats, voting occurs as normal but each candidate needs to have more than 50 per cent yes votes. In case that seats do not get elected, the board will appoint them.

Board member resigning

The board should appoint somebody.

New rule: Resigning: If a board member resigns, the board should appoint a new board member.

Removal of board member

This is something that’s not covered yet as well. What happens if a member disappears virtually? Or what if a board member goes wild?

New rule: Removal: In the event of repeated absence without contact, or other serious misconduct or negligence, a Board member may be subject to removal. Before any other process occurs, the Board member in question will be personally contacted by the chairperson to try to resolve the situation. If this contact does not successfully resolve the situation, the Board member in question may be removed by unanimous vote of the other members of the Board. The board should appoint a new board member.

Getting hired by Novell or leaves Novell

The elected seats are currently either Novell employee seats or non-Novell employee seats. Should a board member resign if he gets fired or hired by Novell?  IMO the board should stay functional, the seat was elected.  So, again let’s use a pragmatic approach:

New rule: Change of employment: The board member will continue to stay
in the board until the end of the term and the next election the distribution of seats gets fixed again.

Constitution

There was some confusion when the new term starts, let’s rectify it.

New rule: Constitution: A new board term should start on the first of January, the elections should be finished 14 days before.  In the case of delays, the new board will start 7 days after the election results are published.

Amendment

How can we change the rules?  Should the election officials be in charge of them or the board itself?  As member of the election officials for the 2009 board election, I propose this change but I suggest that anybody can propose changes but that the board has the final say on them.

New rule: Amendment: Changes by the election rules can be done by vote of the board where 2/3s approve including the chairperson.

So, once there’s consensus about my changes, I propose that the board approves them as stated in the Changes of elections.

Conclusion

The current openSUSE Board election rules are available in the wiki.

Did I miss any case in the elections? What would you differently than I proposed?

Btw. I read the Fedora guidelines on Board elections and also read also what Jono Bacon wrote in “The Art of community management” on governance.