[H-GEN] Linux Australia voting

[Russell Stuart]

On Sat, 2016-01-09 at 23:24 +1000, deadcat wrote:
> It did not work. It also does not provide very good user interface.
> disappointing. I shall continue to remain skeptical of their
> organisation given its lack of updating its website.

It's was written by one of LA's members (Stewart Smith) to solve a
problem LA had at the time.  Stewart is a very competent software
engineer, so it does what they thought they wanted reliably.  Time has
moved on, you want something with a "forgot password", they have
discovered they need other things and Stewart has lost interest.  

The LA exec is purely volunteer, and has a pretty heavy workload
administering LA's core business - running open source conferences.  In
fact from where I sit it looks to be dangerously heavy.  The open source
movement needs these conferences, but the workload we impose on this
group of 8 or so randomly people is so large it looks bound to fail one
year, if only because no one can find the time to step up.

They don't have the time to devote to the "less important"
infrastructure items like voting software and web sites, and most of
them don't have the expertise either.  (Engineers as good as Stewart
don't grow on trees.)  So for now the only solution is hanging out a
"Patches Welcome" sign, but unfortunately that comes with an unspoken
rider: be prepared to defend your patch against a maelstrom of bike
shedding from people who have nothing to contribute other than their
untested opinions, but are nonetheless very keen to see their
contributions counted.  It is the open source way, after all.