[Linux-aus] Proposed Linux Australia Constitution Changes

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 7:20 AM, David Newall <david at davidnewall.com> wrote:
> On 14/07/11 10:40, James Turnbull wrote:
>> David Newall wrote:
>>> >  I'm highly suspicious about the proposal.
>>
>> The current constitution is a mess - we've had several years of invalid
>> amendments and it doesn't meet the organisation's needs.
>
> I'm delighted to hear you say this.  This is a reason one could support
> (or not) for throwing away our current constitution and starting again.
> The reason for my delight is that the reason that was previously given
> was that we want a simple change of financial year and we can't do that
> without making major changes to the constitution.  I was right to be
> suspicious because that reason didn't wash, wasn't true, and in fact the
> current (published) constitution would meet the requirements if we just
> said what our financial year is.  I was right to suspect there was a
> real reason, which hadn't been disclosed.  Thank you for saying: The
> current constitution is a mess.
>
> I don't agree that the current constitution is a mess, at least not on
> the reasons that have been forwarded to date.  The current constitution
> needs only to have a very simple clause inserted to say what is our
> financial year and we both achieve our goal of changing the financial
> year and of meeting the requirements of the new Act.
>
>
>> What is
>> proposed is a simple reboot of the document to bring it up to date,
>> address the financial year issue and put us on the right path.
>
> This analogy might sound simple but the proposal is not.  We are not on
> the wrong path, and simple is as I suggested above.  This is
> complicated, more complicated than just saying what is the financial
> year; and it's complicated for the reason that the model doesn't quite
> fit our needs, just as the previous model didn't quite fit our needs.
> This model doesn't allow proxies, for example.

Did you even read John's original email and the changes that were made?

Check out :
https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution/commit/7707b086bf74f1960eab7aae07a43be6837d3ca0
for the change that introduced the proxy votes into the re-based model rules.

The council has documented all the changes that they made to bring the
current model rules in line with the intention of the old
constitution. In meticulous detail! They have spent countless hours of
volunteer time on it and I for one want to congratulate them for the
effort and the outcome. They have managed to solve a situation where
we are working under a constitution that is outdated, didn't include
several of the changes that the community agreed to in previous years,
and didn't include several of the clauses that are now required by new
constitutions.

Feel free to vote down the motion at the SGM if you believe their
efforts have not resulted in a constitution that we can all subscribe
to.

Regards,
Silvia.