[OpenID] What election?

Thu Dec 4 17:45:59 UTC 2008

Closed boards, with (large company) corporate members, making claims about open standards (especially ones that promote commune-like operating principles) is suspicious, per se.

At the same time, I don't mind it during the evangelism phase (where there is a lot of "perception management" involved in garnering a minimum level of adoption).

The closed board meeting minutes should be made fully available to the membership (and/or public), automatically, say 3 months after issuance. This gives folks deliberations and plans time to act and deliver, without oppressive oversight or comment of continuous disclosure regimes.

At this level of board activity, it's hard to see why a limit longer than 3 months should be considered. Who said what, and when, and why about issues and procedures for handling IP for examples, is very relevant.

From: general-bounces at openid.net [mailto:general-bounces at openid.net] On Behalf Of Nat Sakimura
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 7:44 AM
To: Martin Paljak
Cc: general at openid.net
Subject: Re: [OpenID] What election?

Wow, good to have you run for the board, Martin!

I have been pretty vocal on the closed nature of the OpenID board till now.
I am the person who made the comment that it is ironical that OpenID board meetings are much more Closed than supposedly more closed Liberty Alliance board meeting (which is actually very open.)

I am hoping the new board will make the board meeting at least as open, transparent, and accountable as Liberty.

As far as the fees are concerned, I would push for "free" participation.
Of course, there has to be some benefit for being a "Paid" member, so there needs to be some kind of difference between the free participants and paying members, but it should not be the participation. I tend to see it as being of more "marketing" benefit such as a logo program. We need to be creative there.

=nat
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 5:27 AM, Martin Paljak <martin at paljak.pri.ee<mailto:martin at paljak.pri.ee>> wrote:
¡Hola!

So I decided to get involved and now I have the ability to log on
using my openid to a protected area on the openid.net<http://openid.net> website. Access,
for which I paid $25, as the only e-mail I got from oidf.org<http://oidf.org> looks
more like a receipt from an online shop than anything else.

It also contains:
"You can log in to the membership area at any time at https://openid.net/foundation/members
. You can view and edit your personal details there, renew your
membership, and use some handy tools we're developing just for members."

Eran, I do agree with everything that addresses transparency and
openness in OpenID, so you got my vote. After all, the stress has
always been on the "Open" portion of OpenID, I hope.

Statement, which brings me to another question: are the elections open
or closed? Is there a list of all the people (or OpenID-s in that
matter) who can vote? Is it OK if I use some other OpenID to pay
another 25$ and vote for the guys I like one more time? Is the
"election software" available somewhere for review?  Is the election
procedure described somewhere?  Can I somehow edit my seconds after
I've saved them before the deadline?

I've taken part of e-voting  (over the internet, not at some vending
machine type of thing) here in Estonia twice so the questions should
be relevant and practical/technical. The purpose and outcome of this
election (OIDF and the board) is a different story.

Cheers,
m.

On 03.12.2008, at 2:56, Eran Hammer-Lahav wrote:

> The OpenID Foundation community election (which you might not know is
> happening) is a joke. A 100 or so members are going to choose 7
> people to
> seat on the board. There are currently 12 people running which means
> each
> person have a little over 50% chance of winning. Not much for a
> democracy.
>
> I have been arguing for lower membership fees for about a year now,
> and
> finally, but embarrassingly secretive, the fees were dropped from
> $100 to
> $25. It is still not free, but at $25 it is very hard to argue about
> it.
> Still, the sum of advertising for the current election can be summed
> up in a
> single email sent to this list. The election of community members is
> the
> single real benefit members have. This is the first election and so
> the
> first time there is a reason for people to join.
>
> When were the elections announced? The day nomination started... Was
> there a
> membership drive associated? No. Were bloggers contacted about this
> event
> and the election and membership drive advertised (note the amount of
> bad
> press OpenID is getting this week because of Facebook Connect)? Not
> that I
> can tell.
>
> I have friends on the current board but that does not stop me from
> declaring
> it incompetent. I don't need to go after the big failures of how
> this board
> is unable to get anything done (other than establish itself). I can
> just
> point to how this election process is being (miss) managed to make
> my case.
>
> If we can't get 1000 people to join as members, even with a $25 ticket
> price, why do we have a foundation? It is *not* too much to expect
> 1000
> people to care enough about OpenID to join. Is the foundation there
> simply
> to make a bunch of large corporation feel more in control over this
> enterprise? (And yes, one of those companies is my employer).
>
> This board had a long meeting at the recent IIW, but ironically,
> there was
> no membership drive outside the secret meeting room. Is there any more
> relevant group of people to sign up? IIW had more than twice
> participants
> than OpenID has members. I am sure the foundation could have doubled
> its
> size right there. Or even ask the IIW organizers to add an option to
> the
> event registration to also join the OpenID foundation (since people
> are
> already paying a couple hundred dollars which they are likely to
> expense).
>
> I am running for a community board seat in the upcoming elections,
> and this
> is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts and motivated me to run in
> the
> first place, so consider this me campaigning. I'm not running on a
> message
> of change. I'm running on a message of a strong kick in the ass.
>
> EHL
>
> Ps. Knowing my gift to piss people off, I am going to do my part in
> helping
> increase the membership count. If you want to make sure I am not on
> the
> board, go to http://openid.net/foundation/, spend $25, and vote for
> someone
> else.
>
> _______________________________________________
> general mailing list
> general at openid.net<mailto:general at openid.net>
> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
--
Martin Paljak
http://martin.paljak.pri.ee
+372.515.6495

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Nat Sakimura (=nat)
http://www.sakimura.org/en/
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