Bylaw changes for 2023 X.org vote

Note that this branch contains two independent bylaw change proposals, which are voted on independently:

• Adopt SFC as new fiscal sponsor for X.org, which is the majority of the changes
• Change the special voting quorum requirements to be limited to present (meaning voting) members from the current rule of all members. This is 564b7711

For best reviewing of the changes in the gitlab UI uncheck the box to show whitespace changes. Also note that gitlab highlights the specific words that have been changed, which makes reviewing the replacement commits much easier.

changed the description

added 1 commit

• de51460d - typo fixes during voting period

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If I'm reading this correctly, this means that any changes - be that SPI -> SFC or other - can happen without the vote of the actual members. Is that intentional? What's the reasoning behind it? Who decides if changes should be accepted, if not for the actual members?

This seems like a substantial change, which should be fleshed out in its own commit and voted on. For the sake of not delaying the election, I would suggest splitting and deferring it for later.

Ok so I think I screwed up the splitting here a bit for maximum clarity, this is part of the separate vote to change the rules for quorum. Instead of replicating the rules in both places (and in the past we've screwed up keeping them both in sync in other areas), the voting rules are only in the bylaws for both. The bylaws do still have the wording that changes to the membership agreement have the exact same voting and quorum requirements as changes to the bylaws.

So as long as these quorum rules in the bylaws are not changed with the separate vote, this change here has no material impact.

I'll ping election committee (I'm not there since I'm running) whether they disagree.

Agreed with @danvet. Just to be 100% clear and insist on the main point: the process for making changes to the Membership Agreement does not change and is specified in bylaws.tex.

Quoting the Membership Agreement section of it:

Additional requirements and rights of membership are specified in the Membership
Agreement. The Membership Agreement may be repealed or amended as defined by
the Special Voting Requirements in section \ref{section_voting_requirements}.

And the Special Voting Requirements section:

No resolution of the X.Org Governance Committee or of the Members dealing with
any of the following matters shall be effective unless and until such
resolution is approved by a two-thirds majority vote of the Members who are
present:

[...]

	\item Any amendment or supplement of the Membership Agreement.

With these change, the rules are not modified but the document itself does not mention the rules to change it. However, the membership agreement says that the member will abide by the Governance Rules in bylaws.tex:

	\item The Member agrees to comply with all the rights and obligations
	that apply to membership of X.Org and to abide by the Governance Rules
	of X.Org as specified in the X.Org Governance Rules, dated PLACEHOLDER
	or as subsequently amended by the Governance Committee of X.Org.

So both documents are tied together, and the rules do not change.

Also note I quoted the text with the new quorum rules. If those are not approved, the Special Voting Requirements section will mention:

No resolution of the Board or of the Members dealing with any of the following
matters shall be effective unless and until such resolution is approved by a
two-thirds majority vote of the Members:

Note the lack of "who are present".

Indeed - having this piece split out with, even with a fraction of the above details would be great.

Thanks o/

@rg3igalia we need the approval from SFC before we can commit it all. I think so at least, maybe a topic for this week's board meeting. I think @lyudess said she'll ping SFC about next steps.

@lyudess pushed the result of the elections to the main branch and regeneration everything with the right dates, we can close this MR here now

closed