First of all, being part of GNOME Foundation Membership and Elections Committee is a work that no much people wants to do. The biggest cause of this is that our work is sometimes not observed and recognized.
As part of Membership Committee since 2008, I was always confuse with our “renew” process. Always wondered why it was that way, but I would not change by myself (there was a time I was alone in the committee, because no one wanted to help).
I have some thoughts about this:
1. Excluding people who have contributed in the past is something rude, really. It’s do not give value the contributions made by that person. The contribution made by that person helped GNOME to get where we are today.
2. Renew application every two years is so much boring.
Thinking this way, the best thing to do is abolish the renew process. But we must be careful about who can vote and determine the direction of the project. That’s my opinion, but we have ~350 members. We need to take the decision together.
I agree that our policy is not ideal, but the rules and timeline (considering that we are using our “not ideal” policy”) was clear for everyone since the elections announce. What *WE ALL* need is to worry a little bit more with our bureaucratic things.
I might be okay with point 2. but for point 1.: seriously? if I contributed a piece of gnome 10 years ago that was a) completely rewritten after that and b) was my only contribution should I still be allowed to have a say in the workings of the foundation of a project I clearly don’t have any more stake in? that’s just wrong. then we should drop all pretence, and just accept everyone, regardless of contributions, and just make the foundation membership pointless.
You all do so much need to improve your English.
I think that sending an email and hoping that it reaches the member is not enough, this is a technical problem, not a problem of the process being boring. People should be notified a few times when they have to renew. And maybe a few weeks before the elections as well.
I didn’t get to vote and the renewal email is not even on my spam folder so just imagine my frustration :/
@ Emmanuele:
You’re totally right, if you’re thinking just about coding. There are many other things that a person can contribute to the project. Of course we don’t want to have all people accepted for foundation membership, there are cases and cases. What we need is to create a better policy to renews.
@ Bob:
Yes… my english is very bad. Sorry about that.
@Alberto:
People can avoid this by reading the complete announce at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce/2011-May/msg00000.html (especially the “ELECTORATE” session). One more time. *WE ALL* need to give more importance to our bureaucratic things.
What really happens is: we not read the entire elections’ announce mail and just wait for our ballots arrive. If they not arrive, we ask someone about it. It’s a very wrong behavior.
@ Emmanuele:
Could you come up with a rule for when contributions become worthless? So we know when to exclude people?
I think the policy like it’s now is good, but maybe something could be done to make sure people notice earlier if they are not members anymore.
I forgot to renew my membership as I didn’t get the email. I guess it ended up in the spam folder and it was automatically deleted after a while. I renewed it when I checked and saw I was not in the list anymore, but most people probably didn’t notice until the voting period started.
A possibility would be reminding people (in mailing lists and on planet.gnome.org) to check in the membership page if they are still there.
Then you could allow renewals for a few days after the announcement emails for the vote has been sent and tell people on the planet “If you didn’t get your email by now, check your spam filters and check if you are still a foundation memeber”.
What do you think?
@Bob:
Sorry, but you are an idiot. Bruno’s post is perfectly understandable. Or do you want people to contribute to Gnome only if the speak perfect English?