The Free Software Foundation (FSF) board of directors has drawn up a
detailed diagram showing the procedure that the FSF is using to solicit
advice from the community about possible new board members. The diagram
details the roles of all parties directly involved in the process, as
announced on January 18, 2022.
The board has settled on a rigorous and thoroughly considered process
designed to be transparent and engage members, while still also ensuring
the FSF's core principles are protected. The FSF published the
board matrix, which lists the three fundamental requisites for
board members. It also lists other qualities considered valuable for
board members to have when it comes to expertise, capacity,
relationships, and diversity, as well as skills and experiences. The
board matrix highlights some desirable attributes in new potential board
members to help guide nominations. With this in mind, the board member
nomination process has started by following the steps outlined in the
diagram.
All associate members can nominate potential board members, along
with FSF staff and voting members. Once nominations are received, the
selected nominees are moved to a discussion process. Eligible associate
members will be invited to join a discussion forum to then evaluate and
comment on those nominees, with the goal of providing a community
recommendation to the board. Eligible associate members are the
current associate members who were associate members or donated a
comparable amount at some point between 5 years ago and 3 months ago,
plus other individuals explicitly invited by the FSF board.
The board nomination process started officially by opening nominations on
January 19, 2023, with a closing date of Friday, March 3, 2023, 10:00
EST (15:00 UTC). The FSF will continue to publicly announce each stage
in the process. Work to put the necessary infrastructure for supporting
the discussions in place is underway. For more information, please also
review the January 18 announcement of the process and visit the
FSF's Web page dedicated to the organization's governance work from the
last fifteen months at https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board/board.
If you would rather read about the process steps in full, you can find them described in full as well.
If you have any questions or comments about the flow chart, or the steps in the process,
please don't hesitate to contact campaigns@fsf.org.
This nomination process has been newly developed by the FSF in the
interest of including our associate members more directly in the
nomination and selection of candidates appointed to the FSF's board and
voting members. As such, it may be necessary to revise the process at
times. This graphic reflects the latest version of the process dated
January 19, 2023.
