Open Stack

On 12/4/2019 5:39 PM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2019-12-04 15:01:00 -0800 (-0800), Kendall Nelson wrote:
> [...]
>> For TC member terms, those closing in on their ~1 year terms would
>> be closer to 13 months since the train elections concluded March
>> 5th of last year
> [...]
>
> Just to clarify, this is what our (recently updated) Technical
> Committee Member Policy appendix to the OSF Bylaws says about TC
> term durations:
>
>      2.a. [...] Each Technical Committee member shall hold the seat
>      for a term not to exceed sixteen months, but may be re-elected
>      to the Technical Committee. After January 1, 2019, the term for
>      the members of the Technical Committee shall be approved by a
>      majority of the Technical Committee (“Term”) and shall be
>      published publicly before each Technical Committee election; if
>      no such Term is published the Term will be twelve calendar
>      months. [...]
>
>      https://www.openstack.org/legal/technical-committee-member-policy/
>
> So those members elected in March can't actually serve past the
> anniversary of their elections *unless* prior to the election in
> which they were elected the seated TC had declared they would serve
> a longer term. The bylaws allow the TC to set a longer term length,
> but they must do so before the members who will serve that term are
> elected.
>
> So terms for half the TC members will be expiring at the start of
> March, quite possibly weeks before another TC election is held to
> fill their seats. This is what the TC charter seems to say:
>
>      If the vacancy opens less than four weeks before the candidacy
>      period for the next scheduled TC election begins, and the seat
>      vacated would have been contested in the upcoming election
>      anyway, then the seat will remain open until the election and
>      filled by the normal election process.
>
>      https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/charter.html
>
> So with a strict reading of the bylaws and charter wording, the TC
> will spend a few weeks with only 6 members until the suggested
> election date. There are a few options:
>
> 1. Push the TC election back further. This probably similarly
> implies backing the extra-ATC deadline up even more.
I am guessing that this is hard for the election committee and seems to 
avoid the fact that we seem to have more widely varying release schedules.
>
> 2. Amend the charter to allow the TC to reappoint the holders of the
> expired seats until the next election (I can't quite tell if this
> would violate the term limit wording in the bylaws, but it needs
> discussing).
I think for this particular case it is worth discussing and is something 
we maybe want to formalize for the future in case other unexpected 
circumstances arise.
> 3. Probably only a solution for 2021 and later elections, but start
> declaring now that TC seat terms are something like "14 months or
> until the date of the next election" so that the TC doesn't need to
> predict election timing more than a year in advance (OSF bylaws
> authorize us to make it up to 16 months for that matter).

I would support this change in the future or we could combine 2 and 3 
such that they have a 14 month term or until the date of the next 
election.  If the next election is beyond 14 months the TC can reappoint 
the holders until the election can be held.  That would be a catch all.

Jay