On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Ross Gardler <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not going to dig into all the details of how a vote is called in the ASF. > > In posting this I am not asking for the current vote to be recalled, > there is no need. > > I am just wanting to flag something that concerns me about how the > vote was called (and as per usual this is just advice from a mentor, > these are not rules that must be adopted). > > In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone > should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as > much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to > day discussion. >
We're very concerned, as we should be, to ensure that everyone, even non-PPMC members, can weigh in on all project discussions and decisions, including policy and governance questions. As we should. I applaud that commitment to openness. However, the proposal that we're voting on has this clause regarding the support forums: "Forum governance will be discussed in a publicly readable forum. Write access will be limited to those with at least 10 posts." In other words, we're agreeing to a proposal where it is not true that "In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion." When I brought that up in the discussion thread I was shut down by a mentor for introducing an "overly legalistic parsing" of the proposal. I take that to mean I was thinking too much. I'll stop now, because honestly the incongruity if our words and actions is shameful and painful to observe. -Rob > It is true that only some members of the community have binding votes. > However, this only becomes important in the event of an absence of > community consensus. > > Therefore, when calling a vote please do not word it in such a way > that implies others in the community do not have a vote that counts. > It does count. A responsible PPMC member will use their own vote to > support any appropriate objections from the community. They can only > do that if the community is encouraged to express their views > alongside everyone else.. > > Specifically, there is no need to define binding votes in the vote > thread, the way Apache Projects vote is well documented and, over > time, the AOOo project will gain its own guidelines. Secondly, do not > list the people who are "important" enough to have a binding vote. > Thirdly, explicitly call for all community members to express their > preferences in the vote. > > In other words, make every action of the PPMC as inclusive as possible. > > Finally, Denis - thank you for calling the vote. > > Ross > > -- > Ross Gardler (@rgardler) > Programme Leader (Open Development) > OpenDirective http://opendirective.com >
