[Community-Discuss] Bylaws changes

[Alan Barrett]

> On 9 Nov 2016, at 16:44, ALAIN AINA <aalain at trstech.net> wrote:
>> The Bylaws have always given the Board the power to make policy without going throgh the PDWG process.  The Board has never exercised that power in the past, but the ability is there in the Bylaws in case a good reason appears in the future.  We are talking about reducing that power so that the Board cannot abuse it.
> 
> Good Alan, but the way it was presented  does not sound same as your last text. 
> But It was also proposed to just remove board adopting policy from bylaws and only depend on the PDP. May be an updated version of the PDP ?

Yes, there was a suggestion to remove the Baord’s ability to make policy.  I don’t agree with that.  I still think that it’s useful for the Baord to be able to make policy, but this ability should be constrained.

For example, imagine two competing policy proposal that agree on almost everything except one  detail.  Say there is no agreement on whether an important number in the policy should be 70% or 80%, and both sides have enough support to prevent the other side from getting rough consensus.  This is the kind of deadlock I referred to in an earlier message.  In such a case, if the Board considers it “necessary and urgent”, it could make a decision in terms of the Bylaws section 11.4, and then bring it to the community for endorsement in terms of 11.5.

The problem that I am trying to fix is that the Bylaws article 11.5 doesn’t say what happens if the policy is not endorsed, and doesn’t say how you measure whether or not a policy is endorsed.


Alan Barrett