SPI bylaws overhaul: new discussion draft

[Josh berkus]

Jimmy,

> These discussions are only worth having in the context of hoping to make
> changes to the content of the bylaws. Accordingly, now that I've provided an
> automatic diff alongside my textual summary and am aware of the issue for the
> future, can we refocus this conversation on substantive feedback? I fear some
> people with substantive opinions may already have tuned out this thread based
> on how extended this comparison and formatting discussion has become.

So, how about a narrative explanation of what changes the board wishes
to make and why?  I appreciate the markup, but since there's no comments
and the sections are being renumbered, it's really impossible to make
sense of.

I know it's not your intention, but it really feels like you're pushing
for the membership to approve these changes without understanding them.
For my part, I feel that our threshold for changes to the bylaws ought
to be *at least* as high as reviewing a patch for one of our projects.

Here's my suggestion for how to handle this:

1. someone should do a writeup, with detail of each change in the bylaws
and why it's necessary.  In a lot of cases, it looks like you're just
trying to bring the bylaws into alignment with our actual practice, but
again, this needs to be explained.

2. SPI should have an open special IRC meeting with members of the board
to discuss the bylaws changes.

3. Someone should publish links to the board minutes for meetings where
the bylaws changes were discussed.

We've had the same bylaws for over a decade; I see no reason to rush
into revising them.  If there is some urgency, then please also let the
membership know about that.