community feedback on GA meeting agenda?

[Daniel Pocock]

On 28/09/17 11:31, Jonas Oberg wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
>> This year the draft agenda includes a far more controversial topic, I'm
>> surprised it hasn't been made public already.
> I don't know which controversial topic you refer to, but to be clear, aside
> from the common topics, this years agenda, so far, include:
> <snip>
>  - Whether the executives should be asked to prepare a review, alteration,
>    or removal of the Fellowship seats.
>
> The latter is owing to an earlier decision in the core team to not consider
> the Fellowship as a separate entity from the FSFE, which has too often been
> the case before, but to consider our Fellows as an integral part of the
> FSFE, and then as Supporters of our work. So some change is needed to our
> constitution regardless, but that change can and will not be taken at this
> General Assembly.
>
> Rather, the point here is whether the executives should be tasked with
> preparing a change to the constitution. This could then lead to increasing
> the number of seats, just changing the name of them, or something else.

When it is written like that, it appears a lot less controversial than
the original proposal that was in the agenda circulated on 29 August:

"Several members proposed to remove the Fellowship seats from the
 constitution. Reach decision if the executive should prepare a
 constitution change to remove or alter them."

Notice that in that proposal, the word "remove" is the only possibility
in the first sentence and the word "remove" is the leading option in the
second sentence.

In any case, I think we need to see a specific motion, "review,
alteration or removal" sounds like a topic for discussion, not a yes/no
decision that people can vote on.  I would also like to see motions like
this with the names of at least one person proposing the motion.

I am not in favour of the "remove" option if there is not some
simultaneous effort to replace it or improve upon the current system and
this is why I feel it is controversial.  If people don't have time to
document those alternatives before the GA meeting and discuss them with
the whole community, then I don't feel we could be ready to make a
decision and the whole thing could be postponed for another year so we
could spend time on other topics.

Regards,

Daniel