[Osmf-talk] Board term limits and term lengths

[Christoph Hormann]

On Friday 21 April 2017, nebulon42 wrote:
> Christoph's suggestion sounds reasonable. I would also be rather in
> favour of term limits as it avoids that you get so acquainted of a
> system or of a way of doing things that you lose track of those
> outside this system. This risk is far lower in OSM than in politics
> in general and I don't think any long serving board member is
> currently in risk of that. Still having constant change without
> harming the organization by removing those with experience would be
> good.

Note with the suggested 3.5 year threshold if you look at the board 
history:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation

there would have been exactly four cases where this rule would have 
applied in the past: Steve (2014, not elected anyway) Mikel (2011 and 
2015), Henk (2012) and Frederik (2016).  In case of Frederik IIRC he 
offered his seat for election voluntarily last year so if he had not he 
might have served another year if lot had chosen Paul's seat to be open 
for election rather than Frederik's.

Now you can of course have different opinions on if it was good that 
Mikel, Henk and Frederik were able to serve on the board beyond this 
limit but the fact that only those out of a total of 24 people would 
have been limited by such a rule tells me that having such a rule would 
serve more as equalizing the turnover than imposing an non-natural 
limit.

> > We could for example introduce a
> > simple rule that anyone who has served something like 3.5 years or
> > more on the board is ineligible in any further election.
>
> I'm not sure if this should be "in the next election" or "in the next
> two elections". Do we want to exclude the possibility to serve at the
> board again as in Mikel's case? In politics I remember one case where
> this was abused by a straw man arrangement (big country). Do we face
> the risk of something like that at OSM?

The primary purpose of term limits in my eyes is to avoid the same 
people being on the board over and over again and to ensure new people 
and different views and perspectives have a chance on the board.  If 
every board member is forced to take a sabbatical every four years or 
so this in my eyes does not do much towards this aim.

Keep in mind this is just the board - anyone who has exceeded his/her 
term limit would be completely free to serve the OSMF and the OSM 
community in other functions - and several former board members do so.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/