On 5 May, Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution. wrote: > Hi Steve, > > On Mon, May 05 2025, Steve George wrote: > > > Voting result: > > - 45% (22 votes) voted to pass the GCD > > - 14% voted to disapprove > > - 41% abstained by not voting > > > > This GCD is withdrawn as it didn't achieve full consensus: > > > > "The GCD is accepted if (1) at least 25% of all team members–as of the > > start > > of the “Deliberation Period”–send a reply, and (2) no one disapproves. In > > other cases, the GCD is withdrawn" (from GCD 001)↩ > > Please forgive me for chiming in. I am an outsider and don't care one > way or the other, but the standard for approval seems high. > > It may not be wise, or common, to count abstentions as votes against. (...)
Hi Felix, To be clear 45% were positive, and 14% were against, so overall 59% voted. That gets us over the first hurdle of "at least 25% of all team members ... send a reply". However, 14% did disapprove, and the second hurdle is that "no one disapproves". So the GCD cannot move forward at this time because of that second hurdle. I didn't count the abstention votes as against the GCD, but I did want to document them. Overall, I'd like to see a good level of voter turnout from the pool for GCDs so that we have an active decision making process that reflects the contributors overall position. While the GCD process does have an inbuilt bias towards action, it can't counteract if the majority of contributors don't take part. So tracking the overall level of abstentions seems useful for both an individual GCD and noting engagement with the GCD process overall. > Please also allow me to commend you for your observation, which > accompanied your vote against, that "[you] don't think the deliberations > on this have gone well either from a group dynamics or technical > perspective." > > I agree. > > I derive great hope for the future from your distinction between the > group dynamics and the technical perspective. They are different > things. > > Furthermore, Vagrant Cascadian, who voted "accept," and Simon Tournier, > who voted against, explored some aspects of those group dynamics in what > I think could be a set of foundational messages about good decision > making as a group. > > The Guix project is a great group of folks. I am hopeful the project > will figure it out. (...) Thank-you for the comment. I agree we're learning and this is early days, so we should be hopefuly and trust each other as we build our discussion and decion-making skills! Steve / Futurile
