X.Org Foundation Board of Directors 2010 Election

[Luc Verhaegen]

On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 11:17:22PM -0800, Barton C Massey wrote:
> Voting for the 2010 Election of the X.Org Foundation Board
> of Directors opens Friday 5 Feb 2010 at 0100 UTC, and closes
> Thursday 18 Feb 2010 at 2300 UTC.  All current Members of
> the X.Org Foundation are eligible to vote in this election.
> Members may vote by logging in to the web app at
>   https://members.x.org
> 
> Four seats are open for two-year terms, and one additional
> seat is open for a one-year term to finish the term vacated
> by Daniel Stone's resignation.
> 
> For the list of candidates and their personal and
> contribution statements, please see
>   http://wiki.x.org/wiki/BoardOfDirectors/Elections/2010
> 
> Thank you for your support of X.Org.
> 
>      Bart Massey
>      Election Committee Chair
>      X.Org Foundation Board of Directors
>      bart at cs.pdx.edu

My apologies for being this late with this, this all clashed with my 
DevRoom duties and talks at FOSDEM.

I have another question.

The X.org Foundation exists to best represent the interests of the X.org 
Foundation members, by being the legal entity responsible for the state 
of the Foundation. To a large extent, its responsibility is to manage 
the considerable amount of funds that the X.org foundation has gathered 
over the years, in the best interest of these X.org foundation members.

(for those who wonder about the "best interest of the X.org foundation 
members", this translates to "in the best interest of the X.org 
community, but the organization can only officially care about those who 
signed up")

This is what the bylaws state: "The Board shall keep minutes of its 
meetings in which shall be recorded all action taken by it, and at least 
a summary thereof shall be submitted to the Members at least annually."
[1]

The last time the members were informed about anything to this end was 
in Oktober 2006 [2].

For me, an Xorg foundation member who approved these bylaws, the only 
point for being a member of the X.org foundation is to have some insight 
into and, through the yearly elections, have a say over how the X.org 
funds are being used.

And it seems that, without knowing how the X.org foundation funds are 
being used, there is little point in having an election.

How can we decide who will best represent the X.org foundation members 
interests in the future, if we have absolutely no insight as to what has 
happened in the past?

Is there any chance that this important information becomes available to 
the X.org Foundation members still?

Thanks,

Luc Verhaegen.

[1] 
http://www.x.org/wiki/BylawReview?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=ProposedBylawsRevised20061029.pdf
[2] http://www.x.org/wiki/BodMeetingSummaries