Hello Allan,
I appreciate and understand you are in your role as current GNOME Foundation president and interim Executive Director.
Ban decisions are taken very seriously and are only recommended following a defined process, which includes assessment criteria for the severity of the case. A ban requires evidence of serious infractions, typically over an extended period. To characterise the decision in this case as a response to a single minor incident is factually inaccurate.
That may be so today and indeed the new board undid my ban after reviewing evidence presented to them.
I also want to address the targeting of named individuals in this thread.
I named 2 actors by first name only due to their excessive responsibility and for a bare minimum of transparency during elections. I was very careful not to name any other director, committee or staff member.
The individuals in question didn’t have to stay or run for elections all this time after they had been disavowed multiple times.
An independent third-party review of how this case was handled concluded that the Code of Committee and Board of Directors had acted in good faith.
Good faith does not mean acting appropriately. I’m sure everybody involved has a good heart and thought there were doing the right thing.