On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Wolf Halton <[email protected]> wrote: > One might note 35 ppmc voted and I believe that is more than 1/2 of the > PPMC >
Some quick thoughts, not in particular to Wolf's comments, but something I think we need to remember: We had a vote because a vote was the only way to move things forward. I'd much prefer that we always try to decide things by discussion and by achieving consensus. In fact we tried that, on many previous threads. But it was clear that there were strong opinions on both sides of the naming debate, so a vote was the only way to move this forward. The close results in the vote supports that view that reaching consensus was not likely to happen. But I recommend that we think of this as an anomaly, not something we want to repeat often. Voting is not the usual way of decision making in Apache projects. Except for mandatory voting for new committers, PMC members, etc., and to approve releases, it is quite rare. We should try to avoid using voting as a the "easy way out", as a substitute for discussion, collaboration and consensus building. But in the end, voting is is a tool that exists if honest attempts at consensus building have reached an impasse. Consider: when you have a close vote like this, you have many people who are not happy with the results. If we reach consensus on something, then we're all happy, or at last no one is very upset. So it is always better to take the extra effort to reach consensus. The project is healthier when we're happy with the decision making process. -Rob > http://sourcefreedom.com >
