TB: Urgent Escalation of DMB Member Removal / New Vote Decision due to DMB Stalemate

[Daniel Streetman]

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 8:55 AM Lukasz Zemczak
<lukasz.zemczak at canonical.com> wrote:
>
> Dan, Rafael,
>
> It is really unfortunate that this heated discussion has affected your
> morale and faith in the DMB as a whole. I would consider it a huge
> loss if any of you would have to step down from doing DMB work just
> because of this, as I value all the work you have done during your DMB
> cadence. All of this is really unfortunate and I'm greatly saddened by
> it... especially that the new policy that Dan proposed and ratified
> was to solve the problem of inactive DMB members (and I think it did)
> - while now, due to this misunderstanding in the team, affects all DMB
> operations. This is highly an unexpected outcome. I thought that the
> policy we approved was straightforward enough not to cause problems in
> 'interpretation'.
>
> I feel partially responsible, as maybe if I chipped in my 5-cents
> earlier, during the DMB meeting, maybe it wouldn't have escalated this
> much. Apologies, I got a bit too distracted with another meeting I was
> attending.
>
> From what I see there a lot of DMB members are for simply following
> the policy as is (as am I). I know this is hardly a solution (I'm only
> trying to find an easy way forward), but should we maybe vote on how
> we should proceed?
>
> Cheers,
>
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 at 14:15, Rafael David Tinoco
> <rafaeldtinoco at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > I think this situation is a bit unfortunate. I basically understand
> > both sides of the argument and personally, as a member of the DMB, I
> > wouldn't mind either way really. But since there is such a *strong*
> > disagreement between the sides and I *have* to make a call, I go with
> > following the explicitly defined policy.
> >
> >
> > Just to be clear on my opinion - and it's only opinion - I have
> > absolutely no problem whatsoever with directly emailing members before
> > removing them, and if that had been raised during the discussion of
> > the rule I would have agreed without any reservation and updated the
> > wording of the rule process. However, I didn't even think to include
> > such language when I proposed the rule wording, because I find it hard
> > to believe that members of a team with regular meetings who do not
> > participate in any way in the team activities for over 3 months,
> > including public explicit discussion about removing non-participating
> > team members, would be surprised about being removed from that team.
> >
> >
> > Agreed. We have discussed the topic and agreed that we would remove
> > members that were not active. Sending an e-mail might be reasonable,
> > but that is not a blocker to act accordingly to what was voted and
> > agreed between the DMB members.
> >
> >
> > What I think is truly unfortunate about all this is that both these
> > members are 100% aware they are not participating, they are both 100%
> > aware they will be removed and replaced, and this delay and escalation
> > only serves to publicly highlight their lack of participation. If we
> > had simply proceeded with the call for nominations to fill their
> > seats, it's very likely that few people would have even realized the
> > seats were empty due to non-participation of members.
> >
> >
> > Agreed.
> >
> >
> > Once all this mess is decided on, someone else on the DMB can handle
> > the call for nominations and election for the empty seats. I'm going
> > to step back from DMB work for a while, and let the rest of you chair
> > meetings and handle action items.
> >
> >
> > Same here. I'm also stepping back so others can assume the board. I
> > confess that, nowadays, the discussions happening in DMB are tiresome.
> > That is one of the reasons (among some others related to health) I
> > haven't participated in the last ones.
> >
> > It feels to me that some members cause big discussions just so they
> > can implement whatever they prefer because others don't have the time
> > or the patience to argue back, while VOTING is what matters.
> >
> > With that, for me, if other DMB members agree, we could anticipate
> > elections (from May) and solve this once for all (since now we will
> > currently have 4 missing members).

Just to clarify my personal decision here - I don't particularly care
what the outcome of this specific escalation is, whether the inactive
member policy is followed as written or not in this specific case.

The bigger problem is that a single DMB member is able to block the
team from following explicitly written policies because they do not
agree with the policies. That is what I would ask the TB to clarify. I
think it's unfortunate that we even need to state something like that
in writing, but here we are.

If that bigger problem isn't addressed by the TB, I definitely have no
interest further contributing to the DMB.

> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak
>  Foundations Team
>  lukasz.zemczak at canonical.com
>  www.canonical.com