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2019 Jenkins Board and Officer Elections Results

Oleg Nenashev
Oleg Nenashev December 16, 2019

Jenkins Elections

The Jenkins community has recently completed the 2019 elections for Board and Officer positions. The call for nominations concluded on Nov 25 and the election results were announced in the developer mailing list on Nov 28.

On behalf of the Jenkins community, we congratulate all elected board members and officers! We also thank all contributors who participated this year: all nominees and hundreds of voters. These are the first elections ever conducted by the Jenkins project, and it is a big milestone for the community.

Election results:

If you are interested to learn more, please see the blog post below.

Board election details

The voting results are:

  1. Oleg Nenashev (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)

  2. Mark Waite loses to Oleg Nenashev by 181–127

  3. Ullrich Hafner loses to Oleg Nenashev by 198–115, loses to Mark Waite by 171–133

  4. Alex Earl loses to Oleg Nenashev by 225–82, loses to Ullrich Hafner by 168–128

  5. Oliver Gondža loses to Oleg Nenashev by 227–76, loses to Alex Earl by 151–136

  6. Zhao Xiaojie (aka Rick) loses to Oleg Nenashev by 233–82, loses to Oliver Gondža by 160–131

Although Mark Waite came second in the voting results, being on the board would violate the Corporate Involvement clause which states that "the number of board members affiliated with one company must be less than 50%". Based on that rule, the third seat Alex Earl will join the Jenkins board. At the same time, Mark Waite will take the newly introduced role of Documentation officer.

All new board members are elected for a 2-year term, unless they step down earlier. The estimated end of term for them is December 02, 2021. The actual date will depend on the election schedule in 2021.

Officer election details

We have reelected all 5 officers for the new 1-year term, with the estimated end of term on Dec 02, 2020.

When an officer position has only one candidate that is willing to accept the nomination, there is no reason to vote on that position. This year some nominees declined the nominations before the election happened, and 3 officer nominations were finally uncontested: Olivier Vernin - infrastructure officer, Oliver Gondža - release officer, Mark Waite - documentation officer.

Statistics

Here are some voting stats from these elections:

  • Total number of eligible accounts: 91,015

  • Total number of registered voters: 831

  • Total number of votes: 343

This election was hosted on the Condorcet Internet Voting Service (CIVS). While preparing for the elections, we discovered that CIVS is unable to support our large number of eligible voters. We created a voter registration system to identify voters and then registered those voters with CIVS. The workaround required a slight voting delay. Special thanks to Olivier Vernin and Tracy Miranda who made it possible!

What’s next for the board?

In short term, the renewed board will focus on running the Jenkins governance processes (meetings, budget approvals, funding, etc.) and defining next steps towards improving the project. One of the priorities will be to organize knowledge and permission transfers to new board members so that they can be effective in their new roles. There are also pending activities like Jenkins' transition to Continuous Delivery Foundation which require attention from board members.

For longer term, there are some ideas floating around: roadmap for key components, long-anticipated architecture changes (UX revamp, pluggable storage, cloud native Jenkins), adopting Linux Foundation best practices like Core Infrastructure Initiative, contributor onboarding, etc. Such initiatives are instrumental for further evolvement of the Jenkins project, and the board could help to facilitate them in the community. The ideas will be discussed in mailing lists and during governance meetings. If you would like to share your vision and ideas about what’s needed in the project, it is definitely a great time to do so!

Feedback

We will also also plan to conduct a public retrospective at one of the next Advocacy and Outreach SIG meetings.

Jenkins project plans to conduct elections every year. We appreciate and welcome any feedback regarding the election process. Please use the following channels for feedback and suggestions:

  • There is a Retrospective document in Google Docs. Everyone can suggest changes in this document, and we will integrate them.

  • For ideas about the project improvements and next steps for the board, please use the Jenkins Developers mailing list.

  • For private feedback, please send an email to the Jenkins Board or to Tracy Miranda.

References

About the author

Oleg Nenashev

Oleg Nenashev

Jenkins core maintainer and board member, open source software and open hardware advocate, TOC chair in the Continuous Delivery Foundation. Oleg started using Hudson for Hardware/Embedded projects in 2008 and became an active Jenkins contributor in 2012. Nowadays he maintains Jenkinsfile Runner, contributes to several Jenkins SIGs and outreach programs (Google Summer of Code, Hacktoberfest) and organizes Jenkins meetups in Switzerland and Russia. Oleg works on open source programs and Keptn at the Dynatrace, Open Source Program Office.