Comment: I also have a natural inclination to think that consensus is a bit different than "allow veto". But, well, technically that's it. But I think there is a subtle difference between consensus and "I have the right to veto" thing - especially that consensus is all about getting people united, and veto is all about getting them conflicted. IMHO veto should only be used in very specific situations where the cost of handling potential veto are much smaller than potential gains from applying it. I think personally that the cost of veto for cases where people are involved and control can be exerted overy the whole project are far too big.
Maybe because veto has a very strong meaning in Polish and for Polish people. The "liberum veto" [1] was the "golden liberty" thing in the XVI th/ XVII th/ XVII th century that every Polish-Lithuanian nobleman had the right to - block any decision by any deciding body. And while historians universally agree that "liberum veto" was great to build "constitutionalism" in Poland - at first when it has been used mostly to show different opinions and trigger discussion (and eventually was withdrawn), they also agree it's been the main reason for its fall. Especially when neighbouring "predator" countries (Russia especially, Prussia and Austria) learned that they can use it to manipulate the system and started to "buy" liberum veto from noblemen and started to be applied to more things that originally intended. Here an interesting passage from the Wikipedia article: > the proceedings of the next few sejms, the veto was still occasionally overruled, but it became gradually more accepted. Before 20 years had passed, in 1669 in Kraków, the entire Sejm was prematurely disrupted on the strength of the liberum veto before it had finished its deliberations by the Kyiv deputy, Adam Olizar. The practice spiraled out of control, and in 1688, the Sejm was dissolved even before the proceedings had begun or the Marshal of the Sejm was elected. This later led to the First [2], Second [3] and Third [4] Partition of Poland. Poland disappeared from the maps (but luckily not the hearts of people) for 123 years after. I see a lot of parallels here. J. [1] Liberum veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto [2] First Partition of Poland - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Partition_of_Poland [3] Second Partition of Poland - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Partition_of_Poland [4] Third Partition of Poland - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Partition_of_Poland On Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 3:27 PM Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote: > > > > On Oct 31, 2024, at 10:04 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz < > bdelacre...@apache.org> wrote: > > > > On Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 1:57 PM Rich Bowen <notificati...@github.com> > > wrote (on a GitHub page): > >> > >> I think possibly one of the points of confusion here is the use of the > word "consensus", > >> which has been a point of confusion for years, since that word has > several substantially different uses.... > > > > We do have an ASF glossary at > > https://www.apache.org/foundation/glossary, which we might improve and > > which we should IMHO point to more often. > > > > Or maybe create an additional glossary on the comdev website, and link > > both pages for completeness. > > > Thank you. I tend to forget that that’s there. While the definition of > “consensus” there is at odds with how I understand the word, it does seem > reasonable for me to agree to use that definition. I am willing to accept > that my *opinion* is different from the *consensus* of the community as to > the meaning of the word, and I’ll use it accordingly. > > I do continue to think that if a PMC votes unanimously-minus-one for a > particular candidate, that’s a pretty good indicator that there’s > dysfunction in that PMC. Ironically, if I now attempt to override that > position, I would be exhibiting the very behavior that I am condemning. > > — > Rich Bowen > rbo...@rcbowen.com > > >
