Alex,

Thanks for doing this once again, and in particular this time with the tie. Apologies for my part in making it so complicated (but those of us who recall the first time a tie occurred will probably think it was less complicated than the solution we ended up with that time!)

I am both delighted that Arne has a seat, and disappointed that Adrien does not - but this was always going to be an extremely strong Board no matter who was voted in given the candidates, and I'm very sure that this year will see great things. Good luck to them all, though I'm quite sure they don't need it.

Dave.

On Wed, 26 Nov 2025 at 11:36, Alexander Gnauck <gnauck@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,

we have the results of the random election

The following numbers were drawn last night:
6 - 11 - 17 - 35 - 44

Which results in the following string:
06.11.17.35.44./

and sha256 hex hash:
44dd25ac935469ff77bcab62e6aeaa2b2b8e727c93085cf93d385c1f7d35e853

and a result after the mod of:
1

The fifth board seat goes to Arne.

I have updated our minutes here:
https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Meeting-Minutes-2025-11-20

Thanks again to all applicants and also previous board and council
members for volunteering and the work they have done.

Thanks,
Alex


Am 21.11.25 um 01:15 schrieb Alexander Gnauck:
> Hello,
>
> you can find the meeting minutes of our annual board and council
> election meeting here:
> https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/Meeting-Minutes-2025-11-20
>
> All Council candidates were accepted. The following individuals will
> form the XSF council for the 2025/2026 term:
>
> * Dan Caseley
> * Daniel Gultsch
> * Jérôme Poisson
> * Stephen Paul Weber
> * Marvin Wißfeld
>
> For the board candidates we have a tie on the 5th position between
> Adrien and Arne. Our bylaws state that the fifth candidate will be
> chosen with:
>
> RFC 3797: Publicly Verifiable Nominations Committee (NomCom) Random
> Selection
>
> The currently elected individuals for position 1-4 are:
>
> * Guus der Kinderen
> * Mickaël Rémond
> * Ralph Meijer
> * Florian Schmaus
>
> I am suggesting that we use similar procedure to what we used in 2017
> when we had our last tie. The solution was proposed by Dave Cridland.
> Its compliant with our bylaws.
>
> The proposal is the following:
>
> 1) As random input source, I propose using the "Main Numbers" from the
> Euro Millions draw of next Tuesday (2025-11-25), as announced here:
> https://www.euro-millions.com/results
>
> 2) Each number will be arranged in ascending order, separated by dots,
> and terminated by "./".
>
> 3) The resultant string will be hashed according to SHA-256.
>
> 4) The tied candidates will be arranged into alphabetic order (note,
> in this case this may be by first or last name, it makes no
> difference), to produce:
>
> * Adrien Bourmault
> * Arne-Bruen Vogelsang
>
> 5) These will be numbered from 0. Adrien is 0, and Arne by 1.
>
> 6) The decimal representation of the last byte in the hash, modulo the
> number of candidates will then be used to select the candidate.
>
> As example, if we take these numbers:
>
> 02 - 10 - 14 - 28 - 31
>
> We'd form the string with the numbers ordered of "02.10.14.28.31./"
> Which we can hash with:
>
> sha256('02.10.14.28.31./').hexdigest()
>
> Producing a hash (in hex) of
> 'ad2edee63a88d7b4b6109944b5222a6cce1c3719ac4d41acd0dbf8287465ace0'
>
> The last byte in the hash 'e0' is 224 in dec.
> 224 mod 2 = 0
>
> This would result in candidate 0 being selected (Adrien).
>
> I have created a small script to create the results with this algo.
>
> It is on GitHub here:
> https://gist.github.com/agnauck/8996415c1a91e5b6e1d27cad0367c85b
>
> and you can run it online here:
> https://sharplab.io/#gist:8996415c1a91e5b6e1d27cad0367c85b
>
> Alex
>