Number of OCI TOB Seats

[caniszczyk]

We ended up in a situation where we only filled 4 of 5 OCI membership TOB seats:
#148

I'm opening up discussion here if we should potentially change the number of OCI TOB seats for each membership class. A simple idea would be to trim one for both TDC and OCI members which would be 7 total. 3 for TDC and 4 for OCI members.

We don't have to do anything here but should have a brief discussion if we want to make any changes for the next election cycle

[samuelkarp]

Two other alternate ideas (though these would be more for the current cycle than the next):

1. Leave it as-is with 8 seats (risk of a 4-4 deadlock on votes, but we haven't historically had those kinds of contentious votes)
2. Offer it as an additional TDC seat for this cycle, allowing TDC maintainers the ability to nominate and vote

[sudo-bmitch]

Looking at the charter, it appears we can amend it with a 2/3 vote of the TOB. If we wanted to keep 9 seats, another option is to swap the seat counts, 5 from TDC maintainers and 4 from OCI members. I'm also comfortable keeping the 5th OCI member seat open until someone is nominated. I get the impression all three options (including the option to reduce to 7 members) would require a vote to change the charter.

Given the current activity levels in OCI, I'm incline to agree to reducing to 7 members makes the most sense. But that's only a soft preference.

[mikebrow]

Lean to leaving it as-is, or amending the charter to introduce a process for replacing any missing/absent tob slots. The charter outlines that deadlock(s), if they happen, go to the trademark board.

[samuelkarp]

I've been thinking about this more and I think I also lean toward leaving it as-is for this cycle.

[estesp]

I'm good with leaving it as-is for this cycle.

[caniszczyk]

Any other @opencontainers/tob have thoughts? Right now the consensus is to leave it as is

We can leave this open for another few business days and come back on Monday to finalize.

[samuelkarp]

In the dev meeting today we voted to call a TOB meeting to discuss this.

[caniszczyk]

That works too, lol sorry

…

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-- Cheers, Chris Aniszczyk https://aniszczyk.org

[sudo-bmitch]

My current preference is now Mike's suggestion to amend the charter with a policy to resolve vacancies. That has the advantage of handling additional scenarios, such as when a TOB member leaves voluntarily, or if a company exceeds the two person limit due to someone changing their employer.

I'll save further discussion for the TOB meeting. Let's keep this open pending the outcome of the meeting.

[cyphar]

IIRC one of my proposed charter changes from 2020 (#86) related to vacancies or other edge cases where a sitting member became ineligible (such as getting hired by a company that already employs two other TOB members), so I'm definitely in favour of improving the handling of these kinds of edge cases.

[samuelkarp]

Per today's TOB meeting, the consensus was:

• Leave the seat vacant
• Draft a charter amendment that grants the TOB the following options
  a. Appoint individuals to fill vacant seats (Acting Members) for a term length up to the expiration of the current TOB (i.e., 1 year maximum)
  b. Run new election(s) to fill the vacant seats
• Do not require a specific choice

Options that were considered but did not receive consensus:

• Allow OCI Member seats to be nominated and elected by the TDC
• Reduce the size of the TOB
• Leave the nomination window open if the number of nominated individuals was less than the open seats

There was an additional discussion around acquisitions and changes of employment. TOB history has mostly shown that members amicably self-resolve if there are more than two members employed by the same entity. Rough consensus was that if self-resolution does not work and this situation arises again, it can be escalated to the Trademark Board for a decision.

I will leave this open pending the charter amendment draft; @caniszczyk and @jorydotcom volunteered to write it.