JSF Voting Procedure

The Jabber Software Foundation holds official votes at least 5 times a year: 4 times (January, April, July, October) to vote on accepting new and renewing members, once (late August or early September) to elect the JSF Board of Directors and Jabber Council, and optionally at special meetings called by the members.

Meeting Announcement
The regularly scheduled meetings of the JSF (as defined above) are called by the Secretary of the JSF. A special meeting may be called for by the members rather than the Secretary. In addition, members may add agenda items to regularly scheduled meetings. Meetings are officially announced by the Secretary of the JSF on the members@jabber.org discussion list. The meeting must be announced at least 10 days before the meeting date. For details, see the JSF Bylaws.

Voting Process
Most JSF members vote via proxy rather than attending the scheduled meeting. This makes life much easier for all concerned. The proxy voting happens by chatting with memberbot@jabber.org on the Jabber network (only JSF members are allowed to chat with the bot). Memberbot is a primitive Python script written by Peter Saint-Andre but it gets the job done. Technical details provided below.

Counting the Votes
The votes are counted by the Secretary, who affirms the results of all elections, announces them in the meeting, and posts the results on the JSF website.

Technical Details
This section is a small README provided for the benefit of the JSF Secretary. :-)