On 07.06.2015 16:15, Dmitriy Setrakyan wrote:
> How do we reach consensus without a vote? I thought vote will encourage
> everyone to participate and provide opinion.
>
> I can cancel the vote, but so far I have heard no objections to the newly
> proposed structure. Does it mean we have a consensus?

If you need a vote, you don't have consensus. If you have consensus,
then nobody explicitly disagrees. The most frequent consensus-building
process at the ASF is the "silent consensus": Someone makes a proposal,
and if no-one objects within a reasonable time (e.g., at  least 72 hours
but can be longer especially during are week-ends or holidays).

There are only two cases where voting is mandatory: vetting a release
and adding a PMC member. In both cases the formal vote is essentially a
legal requirement. Even in these cases, if you suspect that a vote is
likely to fail, it's better to not vote at all and discuss alternatives
instead.

You'll often see the motto "community over code" around here; but it
should also be "community over process" because using procedural tools
to override lack of consensus is a really bad thing.


To get back on topic: I suggest you (or someone) writes up a document,
as a wiki page for example, that concisely describes the CM process
we've been discussing in this thread; then just write a mail to dev@ and
ask for comments. Eventually you'll get a more or less final version of
the doc without having to vote at all. Unlike voting, with gives you
all-or-nothing result, in this way you'll get a document that keeps
evolving as your needs change. If you voted instead, you'd also have to
vote for any change to the doc ... which is weird, right? :)

-- Brane


On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 5:10 PM, Branko Čibej <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 07.06.2015 15:50, Dmitriy Setrakyan wrote:
>>> Let's have a vote on the GIT structure proposed by the community (mainly
>>> Brane and Cos).
>> Stop right there. Voting makes no sense at all. Discuss and reach
>> consensus instead.
>>
>> Voting should never be used as a decision-making tool; it's an
>> indication that the community can't agree on anything and resorts to
>> majority rule instead of consensus rule.
>>
>> -- Brane
>>
>>

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