Re: [Fsfe-uk] Proposed constitution for a UA

[Alex Hudson]

On Sat, 2002-02-02 at 01:34, MJ Ray wrote:
> > - 7. I would like to see a further sub-clause to remove people who
> > participate in an anti-free software action: this would be extremely
> > difficult to word, though, but I could see it being a useful
> > big-red-button...
> 
> I think we probably have to rely on the power to refuse membership from such
> people?

I should have said 'Officers' rather than people; I didn't mean ordinary
members :) The constitution sections 1, 2 and 15 are invariant to
modification, I think the behaviour of executive members should be
invariant against 2, if that makes any sense: being seen to do something
actively anti any section of 2) should be a kickable offence.

> > - 10a. Committee quorum of 0.5 seems fine; 0.1 of members seems vastly
> > unobtainable :( I could see a lot of people joining AFFS having read an
> > article about it in a magazine, for example, so it's not beyond the
> > realms of possibility that we're going to have hundreds of members.
> > Let's say we reach 1000 - quorum is then 100 people. That seems
> > unrealistic in terms of an AGM; although it would be great if that many
> > people would participate that actively.
> 
> I think most of the voting would have to take place by other means in such a
> distributed organisation anyway.

I think we need to define this, then. I still believe a 10% quorum on an
AGM is wrong; because essentially it would make the AGM impotent. Of
course, we could accept that, but I think any other voting system should
then be defined in the constitution. For example, if we go with
completely electronic voting, the concept of quorum is shaky at best,
and leads to the tendency to vote-at-will - we should restrict the
number of votes per year, or risk low participation. 

> > - 10b. Postal voting, but not e-mail voting. Shurely shome mishtake? :)
> 
> I'm quite unsure on this, I admit.  Unless our web of trust extends to them,
> how do we authenticate the vote?  Or do we not allow email votes from such
> untrusted people.  If you can explain that, I'll amend.

Well, a member's keyring is one possibility, which has the advantage of
incentivising (heh ;) take-up of encryption technology in e-mail
clients. The other possibility is to have web voting, where each member
has some unique ID (having been sent a polling card, possibly?) and work
it on a shared-secret type thing. Although the signed-email thing means
a lot of people won't be setup to vote when they join (the majority of
people I know don't use gpg/pgp), it's not really a barrier since the
software to do it is free. OTOH, it's daunting to setup and would risk
reducing participation, so a web-based system would probably be more
inclusive.

I think the fact we're somewhat technical and are able to see flaws in
electronic voting systems shouldn't mean we dismiss them: there are
plenty of flaws in postal systems, and if anyone tries hard enough they
would be able to defraud us. I would personally go with a mix of PKI
falling back to postal votes, or web if we're feeling adventurous, in
the name of inclusivity. 
 
> As a trained statistician, I personally prefer STV with Meek's Method. 
> Would that be acceptable to you, Alex?  

I have no idea what it is; do you have a pointer to a description? :)
Does it address the problems of unequal suffrage? To be honest, I'm
happy with any system that is more representative, although I'm not sure
I see the need for multiple-winner elections (do you have an example?).

> > - 10b again ;) We should explicitly designate a returning officer per
> > vote; someone other than the chair (Secretary, or Treasurer, in that
> > preference perhaps?)
> 
> That's a matter for the standing orders, I believe.

True.

> > - 16. E-mail as well as snail mail, preferably. We shouldn't, by any
> > means, rule out snail mail, but an email copy helps.
> 
> What do we do for people without email addresses?  Everyone has a last know
> postal address, although we should probably email where possible.

Yes, sorry, the point I was trying to make was that we ought to do both
where possible. 

(Everything else seems fine, btw ;)

Cheers,

Alex.

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