Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
[ Moving the discussion to -project. Please do remember to drop -vote from the recipients list if you follow up. ] On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 10:09:52AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Your lawerish-like interpretation of everything that happens in Debian (I assume that was a typo for lawyerish.) For the record, I am offended by this description (not so much the reference to lawyering, though I'm sure you intended it as an insult, but that you seem to think I interpret the bug reports I receive in a lawyer-like fashion). It was not meant as an insult. I wanted to tell that the comparisons you made to countries/institutions and the like do not help resolving our issue because we do not face the same problems and don't have the same objectives. That is not, however, what you wrote (and I don't see how one can get from lawyers to comparisons to countries). (And I don't think the message your comment was a response to contained any comparisons to countries.) I certainly agree that trying to model Debian as a sovereign state is futile, for much the reasons you outline. I may have made that mistake a couple of times when I was younger - I seem to recall having made enthusiastic comments along those lines years ago - but not recently, I believe. In fact, whenever I see that sort of argumentation from someone else, I wince. At the same time, I don't think it is useful to avoid all analogues to the institutes of a country. Any such analogue will, of course, have to be justified by the situation at hand. If I notice that Debian, in my opinion, needs an arbitration body that needs to decide on Official Facts and Official Interpretation of some ratified text, I will look at the courts of law of various countries for inspiration on how they might be organized, simply because they are vast reservoirs of experience. Similarly, when our Constitution gives the Secretary constitutional adjudication powers, I feel it is not only possible but *useful* to tag those powers as judicial powers (and apply to them judicial standards) - with no intention on my part to impose a governmental structure on the rest of it. The constitution should really be clear so that interpretation is almost never needed. That, unfortunately, is not possible. Certainly any ambiguities that have been caused actual trouble should be plugged, either by changing the text or by establishing clear (and respected) precedents, but you can't produce a document that is at the same time clear and unambiguous. Even if you somehow manage to come up with a text of the Constitution that is for all intents and purposes clear and unambiguous, someone will trot out, given sufficient reason, a tenuous misinterpretation to support their cause. Most of the time, that someone will be a loner, and laughing at them will be quite sufficient, but there may come a time that their cause is shared by a significant portion of the developers, or simply few developers with sufficient clout, and they may decide to pretend the misinterpretation actually had any merit[*]. In such a case, you need some mechanism for slapping them down - a constitutional arbitration body, or an Oracle as I have described it in this discussion. [*] I'm sure people on both sides of the recent events might, at least on bad days, claim that this is actually what happened late last year - with the *other* side being the bad guys. A constitutional interpretation, no matter how well the original document was written, will remain unchalleged only while there is no acrimony within the developers. But then again, who needs a constitution when we all agree anyway? (In other words, the supreme rule of writing contracts - assume that the nice guy sitting on the other side of the table get hit by a bus tomorrow and their inheritors will be of the worst possible kind, and write the contract to withstand that catastrophe - applies, mutatis mutandis, to writing the constitutions of non-governmental organisations like Debian. Except that, unlike most NGOs and most contracts, we don't have any practical recourse in Debian's matters to any court of law backed by some sovereign state.) We should fix the constitution so that we can leave the duty of interpreting the constitution to the secretary. We just need to make it clear that the secretary doesn't have to interpret the foundation documents to handle his secretarial work and that he must apply 3:1 ratio based on what the GR says (explicit supersession or not) and not on what he believes it means in practice. I do not think that is a good idea. All interpretation ought to be based on the actual situation, not on rules-lawyering like it doesn't explicitly say it, therefore it isn't. If you don't trust the Secretary to interpret the facts correctly, then don't empower him to make the decision. Even dropping the supermajority requirements altogether (Ian's option A) would be better. -- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho,
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
On Fri, 09 Jan 2009, Ian Jackson wrote: How do you define relevant? The vote is run because someome proposed a GR and X others have seconded it. They are relevant, it happened due to them. Now as a voter I want to know their motivation and would like to have a link to mail where they explain it. Would you rather have one explanation by the proponent or thirty explanations by the 3Q seconders ? I don't understand why you seem to want the latter. It's not or, it's and. I want the explanation of the proponent and the point of view of seconders. They might second not because they agree but because they want to see the option on the ballot. Or they might prefer something else but be satisfied with this as a compromise. Well, I would like a smaller number of statements on the ballot itself. One per option plus a small number from notable `statutory' people. Except I don't understand why the statutory people you listed are more important than others (except maybe the DPL). Why did I list the Leader, named or overruled Delegates, the TC, and the Trusted organisations ? Because it might be that their decisions are being overruled or preempted. That means that they must have a right to be heard, alongside their `accusers' as it were. It might be that a GR is about my job of administering alioth.d.o. Why am I not listed ? :-) Are you not a Delegate in the relevant sense ? If the DPL decided that someone else should run Alioth, presumably you would have to go along with that decision. We're not speaking of a decision of the leader, but of a case of GR. Suppose someone want to override the decision that I took of refusing to grant an Alioth project and managed to start a GR. It seems to me that I'm in the situation that you described: it might be that their decisions are being overruled or preempted Perhaps it would be best for us each to try to write up our own proposal and see which gets support from other developers. Might be. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
On Sat Jan 10 15:51, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Fri, 09 Jan 2009, Ian Jackson wrote: How do you define relevant? The vote is run because someome proposed a GR and X others have seconded it. They are relevant, it happened due to them. Now as a voter I want to know their motivation and would like to have a link to mail where they explain it. Would you rather have one explanation by the proponent or thirty explanations by the 3Q seconders ? I don't understand why you seem to want the latter. It's not or, it's and. I want the explanation of the proponent and the point of view of seconders. They might second not because they agree but because they want to see the option on the ballot. Or they might prefer something else but be satisfied with this as a compromise. It seems to me that at the moment that for the average DD who doesn't follow -vote, when a vote comes up they currently either have the single short paragraph on the web page about an option, or reams of -vote archives, both of which seem suboptimal if you have a limited amount of time to spend familiarizing yourself with the issue (and who doesn't have limited time). I don't think that having another place with reams to read (M seconds, proposer and anyone else who fancies it) improves the matter a lot. I think Ian is trying to provide a middle ground where people can explain a bit more justification for the options than on the vote page while not also overloading the average voter. By all means have pages such as you describe (and planet seems to do that quite well atm) but I think Ian's suggestion of an easy to find, fairly short bit of 'extra explanation' which is intentionally limited is size has a lot of merit. It doesn't replace the -vote thread and everyone's opinions, it's for people who don't have time to read that much, but do want to have a bit more insight. Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
Raphael Hertzog writes (Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)): On Tue, 06 Jan 2009, Ian Jackson wrote: [Raphael:] I agree with the intent but I don't agree with the list of persons you selected. I would restrict it to: - The proposer of each resolution or amendment - The seconders of each resolution or amendment The point of this is to allow voters who do not wish to review thousand-message mailing list threads to get a clear summary of the issues from all of the relevant sides. That means that everybody relevant must be able to get their statement referenced but also that the number of such statements should be kept reasonably small. How do you define relevant? The vote is run because someome proposed a GR and X others have seconded it. They are relevant, it happened due to them. Now as a voter I want to know their motivation and would like to have a link to mail where they explain it. Would you rather have one explanation by the proponent or thirty explanations by the 3Q seconders ? I don't understand why you seem to want the latter. Note that the seconders put quite a lot of trust in the proponent anyway, because the proponent can unilaterally accept amendments and the process for having seconders then withdraw their support for the amended version is non-default and cumbersome. Anyone can make themselves a seconder simply by seconding something. So in principle this means that anyone who wants to can get their position statement referenced. Surely that can't be what you meant ? Yes it is. It's also the reason that I don't want it to be on the ballot itself but only on the vote page, available to people who are looking for more background information on the proposal. Well, I would like a smaller number of statements on the ballot itself. One per option plus a small number from notable `statutory' people. Why did I list the Leader, named or overruled Delegates, the TC, and the Trusted organisations ? Because it might be that their decisions are being overruled or preempted. That means that they must have a right to be heard, alongside their `accusers' as it were. It might be that a GR is about my job of administering alioth.d.o. Why am I not listed ? :-) Are you not a Delegate in the relevant sense ? If the DPL decided that someone else should run Alioth, presumably you would have to go along with that decision. No, I would like the ballot paper to contain links to web pages controlled by each of the relevant people. A digested hopefully-coherent position paper, with references and other supporting material as the relevant people think appropriate, allows each side to do the best job it can of being convincing. That's quite different from getting a link to the middle of some flamewar. I don't like the fact that the content of the page viewed is under control of the person and might change during the vote. That's why I wanted simple archived mails. But those mails should be readable on their own without needing to read followup or history. I think we have fundamentally different views about what this is for and how it should work. Perhaps it would be best for us each to try to write up our own proposal and see which gets support from other developers. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
On Tue, 06 Jan 2009, Ian Jackson wrote: - To help voters choose, the following people should be able to require the Secretary to quote on each GR ballot form a URL of their choice, to be used by them for disseminating their vews on the vote: The Proposer of each resolution or amendment The Project Leader Each Delegate or group of Delegate(s) named or overruled A nominee of the Technical Committee A nominee of each Trusted organisation designated according to 9.3 I agree with the intent but I don't agree with the list of persons you selected. I would restrict it to: - The proposer of each resolution or amendment - The seconders of each resolution or amendment The point of this is to allow voters who do not wish to review thousand-message mailing list threads to get a clear summary of the issues from all of the relevant sides. That means that everybody relevant must be able to get their statement referenced but also that the number of such statements should be kept reasonably small. How do you define relevant? The vote is run because someome proposed a GR and X others have seconded it. They are relevant, it happened due to them. Now as a voter I want to know their motivation and would like to have a link to mail where they explain it. Anyone can make themselves a seconder simply by seconding something. So in principle this means that anyone who wants to can get their position statement referenced. Surely that can't be what you meant ? Yes it is. It's also the reason that I don't want it to be on the ballot itself but only on the vote page, available to people who are looking for more background information on the proposal. Why did I list the Leader, named or overruled Delegates, the TC, and the Trusted organisations ? Because it might be that their decisions are being overruled or preempted. That means that they must have a right to be heard, alongside their `accusers' as it were. It might be that a GR is about my job of administering alioth.d.o. Why am I not listed ? :-) Let's simplify and say that any time the GR is about overriding someone's decision, then the overriden person/team can have a link to their own position statement. But I don't see a reason to give any blanket permission for all those parties to have their position statement referenced. No, I would like the ballot paper to contain links to web pages controlled by each of the relevant people. A digested hopefully-coherent position paper, with references and other supporting material as the relevant people think appropriate, allows each side to do the best job it can of being convincing. That's quite different from getting a link to the middle of some flamewar. I don't like the fact that the content of the page viewed is under control of the person and might change during the vote. That's why I wanted simple archived mails. But those mails should be readable on their own without needing to read followup or history. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
On Mon, 05 Jan 2009, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: The big goal, for me at least, and hopefully for the other participants, is an eventual agreement on what the constitution says, or alternatively, a broadly accepted amendment of the constitution that clarifies unclear matters and settles the major disputes. Now is not the time to start the formal process for amending the consitution, but we may as well explore the issues while we concentrate on other matters. I certainly agree to that goal, but I doubt that the matter will advance much when the discussion is buried in a big thread and that we are very few in this discussion. (The recent mail from Ian Jackson counters somewhat this argument, it looks like some other people are still following) It may be that -vote is not the correct list for this discussion. If so, we may as well move it to another list. Moving it to private mail, as some people have suggested to me, would be counterproductive, as private discussion leaves no public record and it is also not open for non-participants to become participants. -project would probably be the right list until we have a real proposition to put to vote. Your lawerish-like interpretation of everything that happens in Debian (I assume that was a typo for lawyerish.) For the record, I am offended by this description (not so much the reference to lawyering, though I'm sure you intended it as an insult, but that you seem to think I interpret the bug reports I receive in a lawyer-like fashion). It was not meant as an insult. I wanted to tell that the comparisons you made to countries/institutions and the like do not help resolving our issue because we do not face the same problems and don't have the same objectives. Now, it is quite possible for reasonable people to come to different conclusions of fact and interpret the Constitution differently. In the case of such a situation, we need some oracle, one that everyone respects, that pronounces the Official Truth and the Official Interpretation. The current Constitution says that this Oracle is the Secretary, but since it is obvious the position of Secretary is no longer generally trusted with that power, we come back to the issue at hand - and to the initial paragraphs of this email. The constitution should really be clear so that interpretation is almost never needed. We should fix the constitution so that we can leave the duty of interpreting the constitution to the secretary. We just need to make it clear that the secretary doesn't have to interpret the foundation documents to handle his secretarial work and that he must apply 3:1 ratio based on what the GR says (explicit supersession or not) and not on what he believes it means in practice. If he believes that there is a discrepancy, he should point it out and help the proposer to fix it if he wishes so (by rephrasing the text to make it more clear what the real intent is). On Tue, 06 Jan 2009, Ian Jackson wrote: B. Developers are to interpret: this is I think the only workable option and given that we have several times now had a GR whose outcome was essential identical to that of the Developers in question, I think we might be able to get a supermajority. I agree with this conclusion and appreciated your analysis on this, as well as your point of view as one of those who created the constitution. GR process - The Secretary should have a duty to help formulate clear resolutions. Eg, add to 5. Has a duty to assist drafters of General Resolutions to clearly and effectively express their intent; this duty extends to suggesting alternative wording(s) which the proposer may (but need not) make into a formal amendment and accept according to A.1(1) and (2). I think this will ensure that the GRs - particularly ones which amend the Constitution - are interpreted the way the proposers intended. Looks like a good idea. - The Secretary should explicitly have the power to delay a GR vote by up to (say) two weeks for the purposes of - running related votes concurrently - assisting drafters as above unless the DPL objects, and may delay it by a further two weeks if given explicit permission by the DPL. The secretary probably delayed several votes without this explicit authorization but it's probably nice to make it explicit. - To help voters choose, the following people should be able to require the Secretary to quote on each GR ballot form a URL of their choice, to be used by them for disseminating their vews on the vote: The Proposer of each resolution or amendment The Project Leader Each Delegate or group of Delegate(s) named or overruled A nominee of the Technical Committee A nominee of each Trusted organisation designated according to 9.3 I agree with the intent but I don't agree with the list of persons
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
Raphael Hertzog hert...@debian.org writes: The GR ballot should only give the URL on vote.debian.org where you would find links behind each proposer/seconder. Ideally those links point directly to the debian-vote archive so that it lets people jump into discussions directly and form their own opinion. I think many people want to be able to inform themselves of the issues briefly without having to read a potentially vast debian-vote archive. Short position statements from the proposer of the resolution, and amendments (and, ideally, from the further discussion camp) would seem ideal, and people can consult the -vote archives too if they wish. Regards, Matthew -- At least you know where you are with Microsoft. True. I just wish I'd brought a paddle. http://www.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 10:09:52AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: The constitution should really be clear so that interpretation is almost never needed. Agreed. We should fix the constitution so that we can leave the duty of interpreting the constitution to the secretary. Agreed. We just need to make it clear that the secretary doesn't have to interpret the foundation documents to handle his secretarial work and that he must apply 3:1 ratio based on what the GR says (explicit supersession or not) and not on what he believes it means in practice. I think that that is probably the opposite of what we need. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
Raphael Hertzog writes (Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)): On Tue, 06 Jan 2009, Ian Jackson wrote: - The Secretary should explicitly have the power to delay a GR vote by up to (say) two weeks for the purposes of - running related votes concurrently - assisting drafters as above unless the DPL objects, and may delay it by a further two weeks if given explicit permission by the DPL. The secretary probably delayed several votes without this explicit authorization but it's probably nice to make it explicit. Quite so. - To help voters choose, the following people should be able to require the Secretary to quote on each GR ballot form a URL of their choice, to be used by them for disseminating their vews on the vote: The Proposer of each resolution or amendment The Project Leader Each Delegate or group of Delegate(s) named or overruled A nominee of the Technical Committee A nominee of each Trusted organisation designated according to 9.3 I agree with the intent but I don't agree with the list of persons you selected. I would restrict it to: - The proposer of each resolution or amendment - The seconders of each resolution or amendment The point of this is to allow voters who do not wish to review thousand-message mailing list threads to get a clear summary of the issues from all of the relevant sides. That means that everybody relevant must be able to get their statement referenced but also that the number of such statements should be kept reasonably small. Anyone can make themselves a seconder simply by seconding something. So in principle this means that anyone who wants to can get their position statement referenced. Surely that can't be what you meant ? Why did I list the Leader, named or overruled Delegates, the TC, and the Trusted organisations ? Because it might be that their decisions are being overruled or preempted. That means that they must have a right to be heard, alongside their `accusers' as it were. In theory we could write it so that (for example) a Trusted organisation only has this right when it is property that they hold in trust for Debian which is at stake. However, in practice none the people I list are likely to abuse this privilege - and all except the TC are subject to the normal political will of the Project so if they make a nuisance of themselves we can just disempower them. Also, writing it this way means that we don't have to have someone adjudicating whether the Trusted organisation's input is relevant or not. The GR ballot should only give the URL on vote.debian.org where you would find links behind each proposer/seconder. Ideally those links point directly to the debian-vote archive so that it lets people jump into discussions directly and form their own opinion. No, I would like the ballot paper to contain links to web pages controlled by each of the relevant people. A digested hopefully-coherent position paper, with references and other supporting material as the relevant people think appropriate, allows each side to do the best job it can of being convincing. That's quite different from getting a link to the middle of some flamewar. Also, it's important that the people putting out these position statements can respond to each others' statements, improve them, and so on. That's why what we specify to the Secretary is the URL and the content is left to the nominees. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
Clint Adams writes (Re: Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)): On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 10:09:52AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: The constitution should really be clear so that interpretation is almost never needed. Agreed. We should fix the constitution so that we can leave the duty of interpreting the constitution to the secretary. Agreed. When Raphael uses the word constitution he does not include the Foundation Documents, I think. We just need to make it clear that the secretary doesn't have to interpret the foundation documents to handle his secretarial work and that he must apply 3:1 ratio based on what the GR says (explicit supersession or not) and not on what he believes it means in practice. I think that that is probably the opposite of what we need. Did you see my analysis ? Do you disagree with it ? What do you think we need to get from where we are now to where we need to be ? Where we are now is that we have Foundation Documents which are: - vague - hard to change (requiring supermajority) - hard to change (changes are controversial) - alleged by some to be binding in some sense other than as a definite instruction to individual developers regarding their own work, and non-binding by others - alleged by some to be interpretable by the Secretary and by others to be interpretable by individual developers Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 01:52:01PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: Yes, because it's not a supersession of the Foundation Document; it's either a position statement or an override of a decision by a delegate. If the GR proposal does not say that it is a nonbinding position statement or an override of a delegate decision, then, by your logic, it is neither of those. (Your logic here refers to your claim that a GR proposal does not involve the supersession of a foundation document unless the proposal specifically says so.) -- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Mon, 05 Jan 2009, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 01:52:01PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: Yes, because it's not a supersession of the Foundation Document; it's either a position statement or an override of a decision by a delegate. If the GR proposal does not say that it is a nonbinding position statement or an override of a delegate decision, then, by your logic, it is neither of those. (Your logic here refers to your claim that a GR proposal does not involve the supersession of a foundation document unless the proposal specifically says so.) Can we stop this absurd discussion/reasoning? There's a context behind all this and discussing things while ignoring the context is useless. Your lawerish-like interpretation of everything that happens in Debian does not help us much, I fear. BTW, the context is 4.1.5 in our constitution: Issue, supersede and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and statements. So by default, we issue policy documents and statements (or position statements). The special case is the modification of the foundation document, and to meet that case, you have to be explicit about it. Exactly like people are explicit when they decide to put on hold a delegate decision (sample here: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/10/msg00106.html). And note that the recent Release Lenny GR was also overriding a delegate decision (the RM decision to use lenny-ignore on some firmware related bugs prompted the proposal of the GR) but the proposer did not invoke the corresponding clause and Manoj did not decide that it was implicitely an override of a delegate… Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Coming up with a new Oracle (was: Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR)
On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 02:07:08PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Can we stop this absurd discussion/reasoning? I don't believe it is absurd. But reading some of the private replies I've already got to my other mail, it seems my motivation for this discussion has not been obvious. To me, this discussion is not (and has not been for several weeks) about who was right and who was wrong about the recent events. In the main, I have been trying to understand the position of the people whose understanding of the Constitution obviously differs from mine in a significant way, and to find the extent of our disagreement. That requires, among other things, poking around in the other person's arguments and try to see whether the flaws I perceive in them are actual flaws in the argument or in my understanding of the argument. (I do also sometimes strongly express that I disagree on some point, mainly as a response to an assertion which, if left uncontested, might be seen as a consensus position.) The big goal, for me at least, and hopefully for the other participants, is an eventual agreement on what the constitution says, or alternatively, a broadly accepted amendment of the constitution that clarifies unclear matters and settles the major disputes. Now is not the time to start the formal process for amending the consitution, but we may as well explore the issues while we concentrate on other matters. It may be that -vote is not the correct list for this discussion. If so, we may as well move it to another list. Moving it to private mail, as some people have suggested to me, would be counterproductive, as private discussion leaves no public record and it is also not open for non-participants to become participants. There's a context behind all this and discussing things while ignoring the context is useless. I do not ignore the context, but at the same time, I see no point in addressing it in every mail, where the context is not the point of the message. Your lawerish-like interpretation of everything that happens in Debian (I assume that was a typo for lawyerish.) For the record, I am offended by this description (not so much the reference to lawyering, though I'm sure you intended it as an insult, but that you seem to think I interpret the bug reports I receive in a lawyer-like fashion). BTW, the context is 4.1.5 in our constitution: Issue, supersede and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and statements. So by default, we issue policy documents and statements (or position statements). The special case is the modification of the foundation document, and to meet that case, you have to be explicit about it. I see nothing in the Constitution that says that point 5 in section 4.1 is the default if another point is not explicitly invoked. But perhaps pointing this out would be more of my lawerish-like [sic] interpretation of everything that happens in Debian. To explain my point further: To determine which point is being invoked requires assessing the matter as a whole. It is simplest when the GR proposal actually says which point it intends to invoke, but even then the proposal may have it wrong. It is quite possible that the proposal's declaration of its purpose is inconsistent with what it actually does - in that case, it would be ridiculous to insist that the declared purpose trumps the facts of the matter. When the proposal does not say which power of the developers by way of general resolution is being invoked, the matter may be a bit more difficult. In any case, one must *think* about it, and determine what the actual effects of the proposal are (and not what it says its effects are - remember the editorial changes). Now, it is quite possible for reasonable people to come to different conclusions of fact and interpret the Constitution differently. In the case of such a situation, we need some oracle, one that everyone respects, that pronounces the Official Truth and the Official Interpretation. The current Constitution says that this Oracle is the Secretary, but since it is obvious the position of Secretary is no longer generally trusted with that power, we come back to the issue at hand - and to the initial paragraphs of this email. -- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 02:07:08PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Your lawerish-like interpretation of everything that happens in Debian I would like the readers of this list to tell me (PRIVATELY - there is no need to clutter this list) whether they consider this characterisation of my messages reasonable. (And also whether they are useful or detrimental, if you do consider the characterisation reasonable.) -- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
- Steve Langasek wrote: Yes, because it's not a supersession of the Foundation Document; it's either a position statement or an override of a decision by a delegate. Position statements are not binding; overrides of delegates can only override decisions that have actually been taken. Either way, if 50%+1 of the project wants to order a project delegate to do something that contradicts the Social Contract, there's no constitutional basis for having the Secretary prevent them from doing so. *The Secretary is an officer of the constitution, not of the Social Contract*. Is now an inappropriate time to start a GR to formally recognize the Social Contract as a component of the constitution? The notion that the Social Contract (our purpose and motivation) is less binding that the Constitution (how we get things done) seems nonsensical in the extreme. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Sun Jan 04 15:55, Ean Schuessler wrote: - Steve Langasek wrote: Yes, because it's not a supersession of the Foundation Document; it's either a position statement or an override of a decision by a delegate. Position statements are not binding; overrides of delegates can only override decisions that have actually been taken. Either way, if 50%+1 of the project wants to order a project delegate to do something that contradicts the Social Contract, there's no constitutional basis for having the Secretary prevent them from doing so. *The Secretary is an officer of the constitution, not of the Social Contract*. Is now an inappropriate time to start a GR to formally recognize the Social Contract as a component of the constitution? The notion that the Social Contract (our purpose and motivation) is less binding that the Constitution (how we get things done) seems nonsensical in the extreme. Yes. Come back when Lenny is released (and I'm also keen to see a GR to clarify all this) Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
- Matthew Johnson wrote: Yes. Come back when Lenny is released (and I'm also keen to see a GR to clarify all this) So how about that release Lenny with DFSG violations GR that needs to pass with 3:1? I bet if it is clear cut that it will pass easily. After that we can move on to correcting the constitution/social contract gap and figuring out if we need another drawer labeled firmware and other indispensable non-free bits for things people just can't stand to put in non-free. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 03:55:43PM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote: - Steve Langasek wrote: Yes, because it's not a supersession of the Foundation Document; it's either a position statement or an override of a decision by a delegate. Position statements are not binding; overrides of delegates can only override decisions that have actually been taken. Either way, if 50%+1 of the project wants to order a project delegate to do something that contradicts the Social Contract, there's no constitutional basis for having the Secretary prevent them from doing so. *The Secretary is an officer of the constitution, not of the Social Contract*. Is now an inappropriate time to start a GR to formally recognize the Social Contract as a component of the constitution? The notion that the Social Contract (our purpose and motivation) is less binding that the Constitution (how we get things done) seems nonsensical in the extreme. I think you misunderstand. I'm bound by the Social Contract because I've *agreed* to uphold it in my Debian work. That makes it more binding, not less; developers don't have to agree to uphold the constitution a a condition of becoming DDs. Trying to prevent 50%+1 of the project from willfully ignoring their promise by writing provisions into the constitution is totally missing the point. Either the people involved are upholding the SC according to *their* understanding of it, in which case no one individual should have the authority to decide for Debian that they're wrong; or they don't care about keeping their promises, so trying to get it written into the constitution is futile. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, 2009-01-02 at 16:59 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: When you say he was asserting a power that was not his, what exactly are you saying? I'm having trouble understanding. It is unquestionably the Secretary's job to prepare the ballot and announce the results; this requires the Secretary to determine which options require a 3:1 supermajority. How do you suppose he should go about this task, other than to do his best job? There is no plain English reading of A Foundation Document requires a 3:1 majority for its supersession that implies the secretary should apply a 3:1 majority requirement to resolutions which aren't even intended to override the Foundation Documents, let alone amend them. Um, it seems to me that's exactly what it says. The question is not whether the resolution intends to override a foundation document, it's whether it actually does so. Nor is it anything short of absurd for the Secretary to declare that a resolution amends a Foundation Document when the actual resolution says nothing of the sort, and the resolution proposer explicitly rejects this interpretation.[1][2][3] So if I propose a resolution that says, say, No uploads made on Tuesday shall be removed from the archive for violations of the DFSG and then I reject the interpretation that this is a supercession of the DFSG, you're saying that such a resolution only requires a simple majority? You seem to be saying that what is determinative is the resolution proposer's statement. I find this implausible in the extreme. The Secretary is at least an official who we can hope will be neutral; the resolution proposer is, by definition, not neutral. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
[I see that we're now repeating discussions already had up-list, so this will probably be my last post to this subthread.] On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 10:08:47AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Nor is it anything short of absurd for the Secretary to declare that a resolution amends a Foundation Document when the actual resolution says nothing of the sort, and the resolution proposer explicitly rejects this interpretation.[1][2][3] So if I propose a resolution that says, say, No uploads made on Tuesday shall be removed from the archive for violations of the DFSG and then I reject the interpretation that this is a supercession of the DFSG, you're saying that such a resolution only requires a simple majority? Yes, because it's not a supersession of the Foundation Document; it's either a position statement or an override of a decision by a delegate. Position statements are not binding; overrides of delegates can only override decisions that have actually been taken. Either way, if 50%+1 of the project wants to order a project delegate to do something that contradicts the Social Contract, there's no constitutional basis for having the Secretary prevent them from doing so. *The Secretary is an officer of the constitution, not of the Social Contract*. If the Secretary believes a resolution is inconsistent with the Social Contract, let him appeal to his fellow developers to keep the promise they each made to uphold the SC. If the resolution passes anyway, let him decide not to implement it in his own work as a developer (either by deciding that the resolution is a non-binding statement, or by stepping aside under 2.1.1 of the constitution). But in no event should he use his position to bias the outcome of the decision-making process itself! The alternative, that passing with a 3:1 supermajority would cause the text of such a resolution to be appended to the DFSG when this was not specified in the resolution itself, is at least as absurd as allowing developers to pass non-binding and possibly nonsensical resolutions. You seem to be saying that what is determinative is the resolution proposer's statement. I find this implausible in the extreme. The Secretary is at least an official who we can hope will be neutral; the resolution proposer is, by definition, not neutral. I'm saying that we should not be trusting in the subjective judgement of either the proposer or the Secretary when deciding that a resolution supersedes a Foundation Document; that supersession is an explicit act. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 10:30:05PM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote: I don't think trivial cases are going to be much of a problem. In any case, I was thinking of a voting procedure for this body where the few voters would only be allowed to vote yes or no, plus perhaps a rationale; we don't need a full condorcet system for interpretation, methinks (but I have an open mind on that one...) A full condorcet doesn't hurt however, see the tech ctte. (Though we have one bug in case we need qualified majorities, as the constitution doesn't require 1:n, but 1:n+1, which is an issue in small groups - but we should fix that anyways.) There's a difference. The tech ctte is supposed to make a recommendation; this body would only be required to judge on interpretation. Basically, you'd have to formulate your question so that it'd be something like 'I think this part of the constitution needs to be interpreted in this particular way. Is that correct?' -- Lo-lan-do Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, Jan 01, 2009 at 01:49:20PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: On Wed, 2008-12-31 at 12:01 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: While I understand the desire to add additional checks and balances in response to figures exercising power in ways we don't approve of, I think the fundamental problem with this latest vote was that the Secretary was asserting a power that was *not* his under the letter of the constitution. Splitting up the constitutional powers doesn't really prevent the Secretary from acting counter to the constitution or counter to project consensus, if they're inclined to do that. When you say he was asserting a power that was not his, what exactly are you saying? I'm having trouble understanding. It is unquestionably the Secretary's job to prepare the ballot and announce the results; this requires the Secretary to determine which options require a 3:1 supermajority. How do you suppose he should go about this task, other than to do his best job? There is no plain English reading of A Foundation Document requires a 3:1 majority for its supersession that implies the secretary should apply a 3:1 majority requirement to resolutions which aren't even intended to override the Foundation Documents, let alone amend them. Nor is it anything short of absurd for the Secretary to declare that a resolution amends a Foundation Document when the actual resolution says nothing of the sort, and the resolution proposer explicitly rejects this interpretation.[1][2][3] Nor, btw, does the final decision on the form of ballot(s) is the Secretary's imply that the Secretary should be ignoring the intent of proposers and seconders in favor of his own definition of a proper resolution when determining the text of a ballot option.[4][5] These are all actions that the Secretary can take by virtue of his position, but none of them are powers given to him by the constitution. Just as a President has the power to suspend habeas corpus by virtue of being commander in chief of a large military, yet this is not a power given to him under the US Constitution. In retrospect, I recognize that I was remiss in not objecting to this pattern of supermajority requirements in earlier votes (even going so far as to endorse them in one case[6]). OTOH, in earlier cases (http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001, http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007) the supermajority requirements didn't change the outcome of the votes, whereas they did change the outcome for this vote. I hope that our next Secretary will recognize the importance of not imposing his personal (and contentious) beliefs on the voting process. If they don't recognize this, then I guess it's inevitable that we amend the constitution to limit the Secretary's power. I am distressed that you have this attitude about Manoj's performance, when it is your own decisions as release manager that have also been called into question recently. Would you apply the same standards to yourself? Which decisions are those, exactly? You're aware that I stepped down as Debian release manager after the etch release? -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/11/msg00186.html [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/11/msg00274.html [3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2008/11/msg00278.html [4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/09/msg00287.html [5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/09/msg00231.html [6] http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2006/09/msg00191.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Wed, 2008-12-31 at 12:01 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: While I understand the desire to add additional checks and balances in response to figures exercising power in ways we don't approve of, I think the fundamental problem with this latest vote was that the Secretary was asserting a power that was *not* his under the letter of the constitution. Splitting up the constitutional powers doesn't really prevent the Secretary from acting counter to the constitution or counter to project consensus, if they're inclined to do that. When you say he was asserting a power that was not his, what exactly are you saying? I'm having trouble understanding. It is unquestionably the Secretary's job to prepare the ballot and announce the results; this requires the Secretary to determine which options require a 3:1 supermajority. How do you suppose he should go about this task, other than to do his best job? I hope that our next Secretary will recognize the importance of not imposing his personal (and contentious) beliefs on the voting process. If they don't recognize this, then I guess it's inevitable that we amend the constitution to limit the Secretary's power. I am distressed that you have this attitude about Manoj's performance, when it is your own decisions as release manager that have also been called into question recently. Would you apply the same standards to yourself? Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Thank your for an excellent and insightful analysis. I wish to touch on just one point: On Thu January 1 2009 06:44:24 Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: What we need is an oracle that says: this is the correct interpretation of the Constitution. The oracle needs to be respected by both of us so that we could agree, in advance, to yield to the oracle's decision whichever of us it favors. There is such an oracle - the Secretary - and every DD has given his or her word to abide by the Constitution and therefore to abide the decisions of the Secretary. The problem was that a small number of powerful DDs held Debian hostage by threatening to break their given word and not abide by the Secretary's decisions. To make matters worse, these few did not raise most of their concerns during the discussion period but instead waited until the vote was in progress - an extraordinarily divisive tactic. The unfortunate outcome is the loss of Manoj's services as Secretary. Manoj has been a remarkably astute and unbiased delegate and an invaluable asset to the Debian project. Most active DDs have strong opinions and it not easy to set one's own opinion aside and rule impartially as Manoj has so consistently done. Manoj's secretarial shoes will not be easy to fill. I am a Debian user and advocate but not a DD. Were I a DD I would urge the DPL to re-appoint Manoj as the best possible way to undo the harm done. --Mike Bird -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Hi Mike, as a fellow non-DD Debian user and advocate, I feel... Mike Bird wrote: Manoj has been a remarkably astute and unbiased delegate I would urge the DPL to re-appoint Manoj ...that you've disqualified yourself from commenting on matters concerning the Debian constitution. Regards, Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 07:31:10PM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote: * Wouter Verhelst (wou...@debian.org) [081230 14:23]: On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 08:52:55PM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote: The problem isn't that the secretary has the first call - but IMHO there should be an instance of appeal like the TC (though this isn't technical, but we have a body there that could be used - as you proposed). In case nobody disagrees too much with the decision by the secretary, we can go on as well. (And perhaps requiring Q developers for an appeal.) Exactly, that's what I had in mind. Perhaps the TC could indeed be this body; [...] I'm not even saying that the secretary can't be part of such a body; the most important part, really, is that I think recent history has shown no single person should alone be responsible for interpreting a document as important as our constitution. I still think we should have someone not the DPL (e.g. the secretary) for the first call on intepretation of the constitution, and then have an appeal instance which makes the final decision if necessary. ... that could also make sense, I guess. But I'm not so sure it helps: Whether we do this kind of thing or not, of course the secretary (or anyone, really) is going to be interpreting the constitution on a personal level, thereby assuming that his/her interpretation is correct. Usually that's not going to be a problem, so we don't need the body. Only when there's a conflict are people going to invoke that body. The difference with your suggestion is that in the case of the 'first call' person, you're going to 'only' have that appeal procedure, whereas if the group of people with final authority is the only authority, there's no difference based on who is doing their own interpretation. This will keep all the trivial cases of the appeal instance. (Which doesn't conflict with anything you said.) I don't think trivial cases are going to be much of a problem. In any case, I was thinking of a voting procedure for this body where the few voters would only be allowed to vote yes or no, plus perhaps a rationale; we don't need a full condorcet system for interpretation, methinks (but I have an open mind on that one...) -- Lo-lan-do Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
* Wouter Verhelst (wou...@debian.org) [081231 21:55]: On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 07:31:10PM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote: I still think we should have someone not the DPL (e.g. the secretary) for the first call on intepretation of the constitution, and then have an appeal instance which makes the final decision if necessary. ... that could also make sense, I guess. But I'm not so sure it helps: Whether we do this kind of thing or not, of course the secretary (or anyone, really) is going to be interpreting the constitution on a personal level, thereby assuming that his/her interpretation is correct. Usually that's not going to be a problem, so we don't need the body. Only when there's a conflict are people going to invoke that body. Well, sometimes it boils down to can we do it that way?, and everyone is happy (enough) with the answer. I don't mind if we do the appeal court in a way that people can go directly to the appeal court in case we expect things to escalate anyways, but I'd like to have a lean way in case we just need an authoritative-enough answer. (And I'd like to see some requirements like we need Q/2 developers to appeal to prevent easy stuff to escalate in case only one developer is unhappy.) This will keep all the trivial cases of the appeal instance. (Which doesn't conflict with anything you said.) I don't think trivial cases are going to be much of a problem. In any case, I was thinking of a voting procedure for this body where the few voters would only be allowed to vote yes or no, plus perhaps a rationale; we don't need a full condorcet system for interpretation, methinks (but I have an open mind on that one...) A full condorcet doesn't hurt however, see the tech ctte. (Though we have one bug in case we need qualified majorities, as the constitution doesn't require 1:n, but 1:n+1, which is an issue in small groups - but we should fix that anyways.) Cheers. Andi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 03:52:37PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: I think that we have made the mistake of giving too much power to one person. While I do not think Manoj willingly abused that power, I do think that this has made it harder for him to retain his objectivity; and that he has lost it over the years, though through no fault of his own. The solution therefore seems obvious: The secretary should no longer be the person who interprets the constitution. Instead, interpretation of the constitution should be given to a small body of trusted developers who only decide on interpretation when explicitly asked to do so. This could be the technical committee, or it could be a new body; but I'd say that leaving interpretation up to one man has now clearly been proven to be a bad idea. While I understand the desire to add additional checks and balances in response to figures exercising power in ways we don't approve of, I think the fundamental problem with this latest vote was that the Secretary was asserting a power that was *not* his under the letter of the constitution. Splitting up the constitutional powers doesn't really prevent the Secretary from acting counter to the constitution or counter to project consensus, if they're inclined to do that. Instead, we have to either have confidence that those who hold positions of power are going to use that power appropriately, or have a system by which we can overrule decisions and/or replace the decision-makers. It's not clear that we can overrule how the Secretary puts together a ballot, short of instructing the Secretary to change the ballot by amending the constitution itself; nor do we have any method of recalling the Secretary, other than by first amending the constitution to allow this. These are both points that I think we should consider revising in the constitution. But really, I think the most important point is that we should have people in positions of power in Debian that the project trusts. It has been quite apparent in this latest vote that Manoj considered himself bound by a higher duty than either the letter of the constitution or the goal of consensus-driven decision-making in Debian. Whether or not this is a fault of his, I for one did not trust Manoj any longer to carry out his constitutional duties as Secretary in a non-partisan manner. I hope that our next Secretary will recognize the importance of not imposing his personal (and contentious) beliefs on the voting process. If they don't recognize this, then I guess it's inevitable that we amend the constitution to limit the Secretary's power. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 08:52:55PM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote: * Wouter Verhelst (wou...@debian.org) [081229 15:36]: - In a country, the body that decides whether a law is or is not unconstitutional, can only do so when a citizen explicitly asks it to do so. In the absence of such a question, each and every law is assumed to be constitutional. Actually, in many countries the President (or King) can decide to not sign a law if it seems unconstitutional. That happened with the current President in Germany twice (and that's BTW next to the only political power he has). In Germany the parliament can then decide to go to the constitutional court to get a final ruling on the case. So the constitutional court (and not the President or King) is the body who decides whether a law is or is not constitutional; apart from the assumption bit (which was a minor point anyway), what you say does not significantly contradict what I said. - In a country, the body that decides on constitutionality is usually a court of law that is built up of more than one judge. In Debian, the body that decides on constitutionality is just one person. The problem isn't that the secretary has the first call - but IMHO there should be an instance of appeal like the TC (though this isn't technical, but we have a body there that could be used - as you proposed). In case nobody disagrees too much with the decision by the secretary, we can go on as well. (And perhaps requiring Q developers for an appeal.) Exactly, that's what I had in mind. Perhaps the TC could indeed be this body; but whether or not it is, what I think is most important is that members of this body are assigned either by GR vote, or by the delegation from the DPL, so that the developers at large have some indirect say over how the constitution is interpreted. OTOH, it shouldn't be possible for all members to be replaced in one go, since else that would undermine stability of interpretation, which is never a good thing. I'm not even saying that the secretary can't be part of such a body; the most important part, really, is that I think recent history has shown no single person should alone be responsible for interpreting a document as important as our constitution. -- Lo-lan-do Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:47:36AM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: Hi, On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:28:27AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: No. The constitution doesn't say that the secretary's job is to interpret the DFSG and decide if the 3:1 majority requirement applies. And the job of the secretary (contrary to the job of most delegates and debian packagers) is expressly defined by the constitution. Its not neccessary to interpret the DFSG in order to set majority requirements. Nowhere in the constitution is it said that the DFSG is law, and that it cannot be overridden. Nowhere in the constitution is it said that the social contract is law, and that it cannot be overridden. I'm not saying we should just thump them out, but a temporary compromise is not necessarily a change of our principles. So, yes, that does require interpretation. [...] Any time that this is not the case, you should assume that we're not changing our common goal but that we're discussing the interpretation that we make of it or that we're discussing the compromise that we can currently accept in order to reach our common objective (as defined by the foundation document). No, thats a inherently wrong way to work with a constitution. Somebody earlier in one of the related threads brought a good example. He compared the consitution of Debian with the consititution of a state. The important thing about a constitution is that one has to be careful with it. Its not a law that you change or interpret like you want if you see fit. Actually, a constitution /is/ a law; it's just a special type of law, that other laws have to abide by. Indeed, the proper translation of the word 'constitution' into Dutch is 'grondwet', something akin to 'base law'. As any piece of human language, a constitution is not mathematically clear, and requires interpretation. Most constitutions stipulate things in fairly broad and generic terms, since it is hard to change them; it is then up to parliament to draft laws that specify those broad and generic terms in more detailed language, and those regular laws can (and are) changed all the time. Laws almost always get voted with simple majority; even those laws that define a current interpretation to a constitution. Sometimes, of course, a law is voted that is later found unconstitutional by the body that decides such things. When that happens, all or part of the unconstitutional law is repealed, and either the constitution is changed or the wording of the new law is changed so that it is no longer unconstitutional, and then put up for voting again. If we are going to compare Debian to a country, and Debian's constitutional processes to that of a country, I think it is obvious that the differences are thusly: - In a country, the body that decides whether a law is or is not unconstitutional, can only do so when a citizen explicitly asks it to do so. In the absence of such a question, each and every law is assumed to be constitutional. In Debian, the body that decides on constitutionality also happens to be the body that takes votes, and is able to impose constitutional restrictions in the vote-taking. This body has, in the past, declared that something is unconstitutional without explicitly being asked about it. - In a country, the body that decides on constitutionality is usually a court of law that is built up of more than one judge. In Debian, the body that decides on constitutionality is just one person. I think that we have made the mistake of giving too much power to one person. While I do not think Manoj willingly abused that power, I do think that this has made it harder for him to retain his objectivity; and that he has lost it over the years, though through no fault of his own. The solution therefore seems obvious: The secretary should no longer be the person who interprets the constitution. Instead, interpretation of the constitution should be given to a small body of trusted developers who only decide on interpretation when explicitly asked to do so. This could be the technical committee, or it could be a new body; but I'd say that leaving interpretation up to one man has now clearly been proven to be a bad idea. -- Lo-lan-do Home is where you have to wash the dishes. -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
- Wouter Verhelst wrote: Nowhere in the constitution is it said that the DFSG is law, and that it cannot be overridden. Nowhere in the constitution is it said that the social contract is law, and that it cannot be overridden. I'm not saying we should just thump them out, but a temporary compromise is not necessarily a change of our principles. So, yes, that does require interpretation. Could we please vote on whether the Social Contract is the foundation of the constitution? This notion that the SC is a suggestion is making my brain hurt. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 03:52:37PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:47:36AM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: Its not neccessary to interpret the DFSG in order to set majority requirements. (...) So, yes, that does require interpretation. Actually I said it does not require interpretation of the DFSG to set majority requirements. And I still think this is true for this particular case. No, thats a inherently wrong way to work with a constitution. Somebody earlier in one of the related threads brought a good example. He compared the consitution of Debian with the consititution of a state. The important thing about a constitution is that one has to be careful with it. Its not a law that you change or interpret like you want if you see fit. Actually, a constitution /is/ a law; it's just a special type of law, Right. Might be that my wording was not clear. I just wanted to point out that my understanding of a constitution is, that it needs to be handled with more care then you do with a law. I think that we have made the mistake of giving too much power to one person. While I do not think Manoj willingly abused that power, I do think that this has made it harder for him to retain his objectivity; and that he has lost it over the years, though through no fault of his own. Yep, I agree that it is bad to give too much power to one person and yes I agree that Manjoj did not willingly abuse his power. The solution therefore seems obvious: The secretary should no longer be the person who interprets the constitution. Instead, interpretation of the constitution should be given to a small body of trusted developers who only decide on interpretation when explicitly asked to do so. Right. I agree fully with this and would second a proposal that would push this idea forward (but *after* we released Lenny ofcourse :) Best Regards, Patrick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
* Wouter Verhelst (wou...@debian.org) [081229 15:36]: On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:47:36AM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: Hi, On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:28:27AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: No. The constitution doesn't say that the secretary's job is to interpret the DFSG and decide if the 3:1 majority requirement applies. And the job of the secretary (contrary to the job of most delegates and debian packagers) is expressly defined by the constitution. Its not neccessary to interpret the DFSG in order to set majority requirements. Nowhere in the constitution is it said that the DFSG is law, and that it cannot be overridden. Nowhere in the constitution is it said that the social contract is law, and that it cannot be overridden. I'm not saying we should just thump them out, but a temporary compromise is not necessarily a change of our principles. So, yes, that does require interpretation. I need to say that I agree that ignoring a document should need the same majority as changing it. I don't think that's the major issue with the majority requirements of the GR. (For a deeper look why I agree to that, consider either the recent US history, or the years 1933ff in Germany, and at least for Germany, the constitution rules learned from that.) I think that the major issue with this vote is that Proposals A, B, D and E all are only weighting and interpreting the current SC, but some of them needs 3:1 majority while others don't. Proposals C and F however modify (or put aside) the DFSG, so the 3:1-majority there seems sensible. - In a country, the body that decides whether a law is or is not unconstitutional, can only do so when a citizen explicitly asks it to do so. In the absence of such a question, each and every law is assumed to be constitutional. Actually, in many countries the President (or King) can decide to not sign a law if it seems unconstitutional. That happened with the current President in Germany twice (and that's BTW next to the only political power he has). In Germany the parliament can then decide to go to the constitutional court to get a final ruling on the case. - In a country, the body that decides on constitutionality is usually a court of law that is built up of more than one judge. In Debian, the body that decides on constitutionality is just one person. The problem isn't that the secretary has the first call - but IMHO there should be an instance of appeal like the TC (though this isn't technical, but we have a body there that could be used - as you proposed). In case nobody disagrees too much with the decision by the secretary, we can go on as well. (And perhaps requiring Q developers for an appeal.) Cheers, Andi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
On Sun, 21 Dec 2008, Steve Langasek wrote: Perhaps you can propose some language that you think would unambiguously capture my position? I not only think the current language is unambiguous, I think the interpretation of supersede that has been tendered by the previous secretary is sufficiently unreasonable that I'm not sure what kind of change would be adequate to guard against such interpretations in the future; and I'd rather not have us bloat the constitution with any more language about this than absolutely necessary. Furthermore, in the discussions on -vote related to the introduction of the 3:1 ratio, quite a few people were discussing the versioning of the foundation documents: the rationale was that foundation documents were important enough that we need to be able to refer unambiguously to each specific version that we created. Hence superseding clearly meant to create a new version of the document. In fact, the term superseding has been used instead of modify because it's the terminology that is used with RFC and other standards. I have never read (in those discussions) any interpretation of superseding that would match the interpretation done by Manoj. For the record, I voted for the 3:1 ratio as well, I want political stability in our common goal. I don't want political sclerose in our day-to-day decisions. Even it that means that we will end up doing mistakes some times, mistakes can be reverted. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
- Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: Oh gee, so the US is using Condorcet now? You know that was not the point of my last message. Condorcet is orthogonal to the issue. A condorcet vote is just a full run off of options against one and other conducted via a ranking. The presence of further discussion effectively provides a we should do this, we should not do this vote for each choice. The question is what is the 3:1 majority against? If the majority is between further discussion and the 3:1 controlled result then I can see how it is the same as a do this, don't do this vote. If it is between the next closest runner up, then it seems poorly defined. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
Ean Schuessler wrote: You know that was not the point of my last message. Condorcet is orthogonal to the issue. A condorcet vote is just a full run off of options against one and other conducted via a ranking. The presence of further discussion effectively provides a we should do this, we should not do this vote for each choice. The question is what is the 3:1 majority against? If the majority is between further discussion and the 3:1 controlled result then I can see how it is the same as a do this, don't do this vote. If it is between the next closest runner up, then it seems poorly defined. So, can't this be fixed by just changing the algorithm from drop all options which don't pass majority requirements, then determine the winner to determine the winner, then check whether the winner passes majority requirements? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 08:12:54AM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote: Condorcet is orthogonal to the issue. It isn't. The US two-party system and resulting political maneuvering are an exploit of FPTP. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
- Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: It isn't. The US two-party system and resulting political maneuvering are an exploit of FPTP. The point of the super majority was to engrave the social contract in stone. From the beginning, there was a concern that financial incentives would distort the shape of the organization and we wanted a safeguard against the system being gamed by a commercial organization buying up the voting populace. (Microsoft being the primary suspect in that day) Requiring significant inertia to make fundamental changes to the original plan is not a crazy idea. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
Ean Schuessler wrote: The point of the super majority was to engrave the social contract in stone. From the beginning, there was a concern that financial incentives would distort the shape of the organization and we wanted a safeguard against the system being gamed by a commercial organization buying up the voting populace. (Microsoft being the primary suspect in that day) I think if Microsoft wants to give every DD $500, it would be worth the effort of forking the project. Of course, if they aren't careful, you could just immediately revert the change, too. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 03:55:02PM +0100, Michael Goetze wrote: So, can't this be fixed by just changing the algorithm from drop all options which don't pass majority requirements, then determine the winner to determine the winner, then check whether the winner passes majority requirements? Possibly. The issues surrounding this implementation of supermajority in Condorcet were discussed back in 2002: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00243.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00174.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00222.html In reviewing the list archives from that period, it's not immediately clear to me why we ended up with supermajority requirements being handled before calculating the pairwise defeats. At least as late as Dec 7, there were drafts being discussed which had different properties, http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/12/msg00023.html And it looks like the path to the current algorithm was set with this message on Dec 9: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/12/msg00039.html -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
Hallo, actually, the discussion surrounding supermajorities in Condorcet goes back to 2000. See e.g.: http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2000/11/msg00156.html Between 2000 and 2002, this issue was discussed off-list resp. at the Debian-EM Joint Committee mailing list. See also section 7 of my paper: http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze1.pdf Markus Schulze -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
On Sat Dec 20 17:51, Steve Langasek wrote: On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 12:48:43PM +0200, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: In my eyes, this argument applies to any situation where a supermajority might be formally required, and in my opinion the corollary is that supermajorities are a bad idea in general. Do you agree with that corollary? If not, why not? Yes, I agree that supermajority requirements are a bad idea in general. Which is a perfectly reasonable attitude to have and I wouldn't be surprised if a vote to remove them from our constitution passed (I might even second or vote for it), but at the moment we _do_ have supermajority requirements and we can't just ignore them because we don't like them. This argument does IMHO not apply to making decisions about what Debian is going to do. We shouldn't take decisions to set aside the DFSG lightly, but the *process* for arriving at a decision should be lightweight. By that standard, the past two months have been a failure on multiple levels. I think this all just goes to show that while _I_ don't think the constitution is ambiguous on this point and _you_ don't think it's ambiguous on this point, we both think it means different things, so it clearly _is_ ambiguous and this is a bad thing. I think we need to rewrite it to be clear and pick one position. I'm not even that bothered which one, but I will continue arguing for what I think our foundation documents mean (even if the vote goes against what I would prefer, if the majority says that). Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
- Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: Yes, I agree that supermajority requirements are a bad idea in general. To understand the need for a supermajority all you have to do is look at American politics. A supermajority insures that a razor thin majority can't end up doing something radically disagreeable to almost half the population. With a three to one supermajority you insure that only a true minority of the project would be in disagreement with whatever action is under consideration. I do agree that we need clarification around votes where choices have varying consensus requirements. It seems like they may malfunction but I can't really visualize all the ways that might happen. Is there a mathematician in the house? -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 03:38:55PM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote: - Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: Yes, I agree that supermajority requirements are a bad idea in general. To understand the need for a supermajority all you have to do is look at American politics. A supermajority insures that a razor thin majority can't end up doing something radically disagreeable to almost half the population. With a three to one supermajority you insure that only a true minority of the project would be in disagreement with whatever action is under consideration. Oh gee, so the US is using Condorcet now? -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 02:22:40PM +, Matthew Johnson wrote: On Sat Dec 20 17:51, Steve Langasek wrote: On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 12:48:43PM +0200, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: In my eyes, this argument applies to any situation where a supermajority might be formally required, and in my opinion the corollary is that supermajorities are a bad idea in general. Do you agree with that corollary? If not, why not? Yes, I agree that supermajority requirements are a bad idea in general. Which is a perfectly reasonable attitude to have and I wouldn't be surprised if a vote to remove them from our constitution passed (I might even second or vote for it), but at the moment we _do_ have supermajority requirements and we can't just ignore them because we don't like them. Which is not what I have proposed. My only expectation is that supermajority requirements not be imposed for resolutions that *don't* explicitly modify the constitution or a foundation document (or override the TC). This argument does IMHO not apply to making decisions about what Debian is going to do. We shouldn't take decisions to set aside the DFSG lightly, but the *process* for arriving at a decision should be lightweight. By that standard, the past two months have been a failure on multiple levels. I think this all just goes to show that while _I_ don't think the constitution is ambiguous on this point and _you_ don't think it's ambiguous on this point, we both think it means different things, so it clearly _is_ ambiguous and this is a bad thing. I think we need to rewrite it to be clear and pick one position. I'm not even that bothered which one, but I will continue arguing for what I think our foundation documents mean (even if the vote goes against what I would prefer, if the majority says that). Perhaps you can propose some language that you think would unambiguously capture my position? I not only think the current language is unambiguous, I think the interpretation of supersede that has been tendered by the previous secretary is sufficiently unreasonable that I'm not sure what kind of change would be adequate to guard against such interpretations in the future; and I'd rather not have us bloat the constitution with any more language about this than absolutely necessary. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 04:36:59PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: if a majority of voters vote that we should put Nvidia drivers in main, then your fundamental problem is that you have a majority of people (or at least, voters) in Debian who think it's ok to put Nvidia drivers in main. Your only real choices, then, are to persuade them that they're wrong, live with it, drive them off, or leave. The other option you're proposing here, to prevent them from doing what they want to unless they have a 3:1 majority, reduces to coerce the majority to do what you say they should do, even though they don't think you're right. Do you really think that's a solution to the above pathological scenario? In my eyes, this argument applies to any situation where a supermajority might be formally required, and in my opinion the corollary is that supermajorities are a bad idea in general. Do you agree with that corollary? If not, why not? -- Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 04:36:59PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: The other option you're proposing here, to prevent them from doing what they want to unless they have a 3:1 majority, reduces to coerce the majority to do what you say they should do, even though they don't think you're right. This argument is just as true for any other time a 3:1 majority would be used, such as when actually changing the document. Is your position that changing foundation documents should only require 1:1 as well? IMO it is very reasonable to use the same requirements for changing a document permanently of temporarily. How about using a temporary override for the rule that changing the constitution needs a 3:1 majority? I think everybody will agree that allowing that would be madness. If we do indeed want to change our constitution with simple majority, we should change it to say that (with 3:1 majority, of course). Note that this doesn't have much to do with the gr_lenny anymore. I'm only talking about cases where it's actually clear that a GR option is violating a foundation document, but isn't changing it. Thanks, Bas -- I encourage people to send encrypted e-mail (see http://www.gnupg.org). If you have problems reading my e-mail, use a better reader. Please send the central message of e-mails as plain text in the message body, not as HTML and definitely not as MS Word. Please do not use the MS Word format for attachments either. For more information, see http://a82-93-13-222.adsl.xs4all.nl/e-mail.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]
On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 12:48:43PM +0200, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote: On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 04:36:59PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: if a majority of voters vote that we should put Nvidia drivers in main, then your fundamental problem is that you have a majority of people (or at least, voters) in Debian who think it's ok to put Nvidia drivers in main. Your only real choices, then, are to persuade them that they're wrong, live with it, drive them off, or leave. The other option you're proposing here, to prevent them from doing what they want to unless they have a 3:1 majority, reduces to coerce the majority to do what you say they should do, even though they don't think you're right. Do you really think that's a solution to the above pathological scenario? In my eyes, this argument applies to any situation where a supermajority might be formally required, and in my opinion the corollary is that supermajorities are a bad idea in general. Do you agree with that corollary? If not, why not? Yes, I agree that supermajority requirements are a bad idea in general. - They have unpleasant side-effects when coupled with Clone-proof SSD, by making certain types of strategic voting much more interesting to voters (i.e., strategizing about contributing to the quorum requirements for a particular option by voting it above or below FD when there's a mixture of supermajority requirements on a single ballot - precisely what I've seen discussed on Planet and IRC during the current voting round). http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00343.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00316.html - Their nominal purpose is to prevent a tyranny of the majority, but in practice they only place limits on the /size/ of the tyrannic majority; a commitment to consensus-driven decision making, plus the right of any DD to propose any compromise amendment they want to, are a much better approach to preventing tyranny of the majority, and where these methods are ineffective supermajority requirements won't help either, so supermajority requirements are entirely superfluous from that POV. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00241.html The only argument in favor of a supermajority requirement for foundation docs that I found compelling at the time this was brought up for discussion was the concept of institutional stability: if a particular change to the DFSG doesn't enjoy *strong* support from a majority, there's a significant risk of flip-flopping our Foundation Documents in a fairly short period of time, as opinions in the project shift, and it's better to let the Foundation Documents lag slightly behind opinion than to have a high degree of churn in our highest-profile statements of principle. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00357.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00264.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00253.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00266.html This argument does IMHO not apply to making decisions about what Debian is going to do. We shouldn't take decisions to set aside the DFSG lightly, but the *process* for arriving at a decision should be lightweight. By that standard, the past two months have been a failure on multiple levels. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org P.S. A quote that I found amusing when going through old mail: I don't agree with your assumption that we're not clever enough to think of a way of introducing supermajority requirements without sacrificing an important property of CpSSD. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/11/msg00311.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Manoj Srivastava wrote: This, then, should also apply for the developer who is serving as the secretary. Or you shpould amend your statement here, to say that all developers, with the exception of the secretary, interpret the DFSG in performing their duties. No. The constitution doesn't say that the secretary's job is to interpret the DFSG and decide if the 3:1 majority requirement applies. And the job of the secretary (contrary to the job of most delegates and debian packagers) is expressly defined by the constitution. The constitution says: “A Foundation Document requires a 3:1 majority for its supersession. New Foundation Documents are issued and existing ones withdrawn by amending the list of Foundation Documents in this constitution.“ Superseding a document is easily recognizable: it's when you explicitely say that you're going to change its _content_ (ex: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 ). Any time that this is not the case, you should assume that we're not changing our common goal but that we're discussing the interpretation that we make of it or that we're discussing the compromise that we can currently accept in order to reach our common objective (as defined by the foundation document). And this is a prerogative of the project: we as a whole (as defined by a simple majority), should be able do make decisions on how Debian will achieve its goals without fearing to be blocked by the interpretation of one of its member (be it the secretary). And I know that it's the job of the secretary to rule dispute about interpretation of the constitution but the constitution also says: “The Project Secretary should make decisions which are fair and reasonable, and preferably consistent with the consensus of the Developers.“ And I believe that your interpretation doesn't fit the above rule. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Hi, On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:28:27AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: No. The constitution doesn't say that the secretary's job is to interpret the DFSG and decide if the 3:1 majority requirement applies. And the job of the secretary (contrary to the job of most delegates and debian packagers) is expressly defined by the constitution. Its not neccessary to interpret the DFSG in order to set majority requirements. The constitution says: “A Foundation Document requires a 3:1 majority for its supersession. New Foundation Documents are issued and existing ones withdrawn by amending the list of Foundation Documents in this constitution.“ Superseding a document is easily recognizable: it's when you explicitely say that you're going to change its _content_ (ex: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 ). I wouldn't say that it is that easy. We do not have rules for temporary overriding a foundation document, therefore we need to apply one of the rules we have. Its not so easy as you make it: Its no supersession, lets just apply what is on our mood. In fact superseding a document means abrogating it and yes its permanent. But if you abrogate it temporary the effect is still the same. Any time that this is not the case, you should assume that we're not changing our common goal but that we're discussing the interpretation that we make of it or that we're discussing the compromise that we can currently accept in order to reach our common objective (as defined by the foundation document). No, thats a inherently wrong way to work with a constitution. Somebody earlier in one of the related threads brought a good example. He compared the consitution of Debian with the consititution of a state. The important thing about a constitution is that one has to be careful with it. Its not a law that you change or interpret like you want if you see fit. Its something you must interpret as carefully and conservative as possible, so you don't break the basis of a society (e.g. human rights). Now our consitution does not protect human rights, but still they name consitution has been used, while we could have namd it.. hmm.. Manifesto or somewhat like that. That is, because people wanted to have this document a special meaning. We should really act like that. And this is a prerogative of the project: we as a whole (as defined by a simple majority), should be able do make decisions on how Debian will achieve its goals without fearing to be blocked by the interpretation of one of its member (be it the secretary). That is right, but consider your wording: You say that we as a *whole* should be able to make decisions on how Debian will achieve its goals and thats exactly why there are majority requirements. A whole project wouldn't have a problem fitting the 3:1 majority if it were the decision of the whole project. This argumentation therefore is kind of odd. Saying its one person who does block it is not fair either. Manoj did not say Our consitution does not allow to vote, my opinion is binding according to our consitution so your wording is a bad allegation. Regards, Patrick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote: On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:28:27AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: No. The constitution doesn't say that the secretary's job is to interpret the DFSG and decide if the 3:1 majority requirement applies. And the job of the secretary (contrary to the job of most delegates and debian packagers) is expressly defined by the constitution. Its not neccessary to interpret the DFSG in order to set majority requirements. I agree with this. But Manoj doesn't. The constitution says: “A Foundation Document requires a 3:1 majority for its supersession. New Foundation Documents are issued and existing ones withdrawn by amending the list of Foundation Documents in this constitution.“ Superseding a document is easily recognizable: it's when you explicitely say that you're going to change its _content_ (ex: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 ). I wouldn't say that it is that easy. It is. Does the resolution say what the new version of the foundation document will look like if it's accepted ? If yes, then it supersedes the document. Otherwise it doesn't. We do not have rules for temporary overriding a foundation document, therefore we need to apply one of the rules we have. I'm sorry, you don't have to pick one of the existing rules and stretch it to cover some unexpected case. The default rule for position statement applies and it's a GR with a 1:1 ratio. abrogating it and yes its permanent. But if you abrogate it temporary the effect is still the same. No. In one case, we alter our (long-term) goal, in the other we don't. Anthony Towns is right. Some people take the social contract as a law. Other take it as a goal. We probably need to clear up this. But even if we consider it as law, the social contract is written in such a way that there's room for interpretation, whereas the constitution is much more precise in all our rules. Any time that this is not the case, you should assume that we're not changing our common goal but that we're discussing the interpretation that we make of it or that we're discussing the compromise that we can currently accept in order to reach our common objective (as defined by the foundation document). No, thats a inherently wrong way to work with a constitution. Somebody I was not speaking of the constitution but of the “Foundation documents”. Quoting the constitution: “The Foundation Documents are the works entitled Debian Social Contract and Debian Free Software Guidelines.” The constitution is not a foundation document although it is subject to the same rules for its modification. And this is a prerogative of the project: we as a whole (as defined by a simple majority), should be able do make decisions on how Debian will achieve its goals without fearing to be blocked by the interpretation of one of its member (be it the secretary). That is right, but consider your wording: You say that we as a *whole* should be able to make decisions on how Debian will achieve its goals and thats exactly why there are majority requirements. A whole project wouldn't have a problem fitting the 3:1 majority if it were the decision of the whole project. This argumentation therefore is kind of odd. Saying its one person who does block it is not fair either. Manoj did not say Our consitution does not allow to vote, my opinion is binding according to our consitution so your wording is a bad allegation. I'm at a loss… I don't know how I can better explain the problem. I'll thy nevertheless: If you consider that we all agree on the goals (and for me this is a given, we all agreed to the social contract), imposing a 3:1 ratio on any vote that should decide how we will handle the next step (that should bring us closer to our goals) is an effective way to block any progress: we've seen at numerous occasions that consensus is almost unachievable and that we need fair decision-making process. Imposing consensus is okay when it comes to changing/altering our objectives. But it's not okay when it comes to decisions on how we want to reach our objectives. I hope this clears it up. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Ian Lynagh wrote: On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:28:27AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Superseding a document is easily recognizable: it's when you explicitely say that you're going to change its _content_ (ex: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 ). Any time that this is not the case, you should assume that we're not changing our common goal but that we're discussing the interpretation that we make of it If that is the case, why would anyone propose changing a foundation document, and risk failing to meet the 3:1 requirement, when they could simply declare that they interpret it to say what they would like it to say, and have a 1:1 vote? Because they really want to change the goal/values of the project? And please don't assume that a majority of developers are insane and want to pervert the project. If that is the case, we're all in a bad situation anyway. :-) I'm convinced that a majority of developers would vote against any proposition that contradicts the social contract if there's no (good) rationale for the decision that justifies to temporary shift away from our goals. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 09:35:23PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 08:15:25PM -0600, Guilherme de S. Pastore wrote: Avoiding getting too technical about it, it is still illogical. You cannot produce the same effects of an amendment, even though temporarily, bypassing the requirements to an amendment. Creating an exception by means of General Resolution is equivalent to adding a little line to the document stating that this does not apply to the Lenny release, except for the fact that we leave it in another official document for convenience reasons. If the effect in question here is the release of lenny with sourceless firmware included in main, you certainly can get that effect without an amendment - precisely because under the constitution and in the absence of a GR to the contrary, interpretation and enforcement of the foundation documents devolves to the individual developers whose work it touches. Then we get back to my other point, the Congress x Police Officer example. If there had been no General Resolution, that's fine, and the whole issue of interpreting and enforcing our foundation documents would be subject to the sole judgement of the Release Team. Great. Not saying they did - again, I am trying to touch the abstract considerations made here, not the Lenny release case concretely -, but assuming that the Release Team's decisions did go against the foundation documents, once you have our official decision-making body vouching for it (saying forget that and release Lenny!), it is no longer a matter of overruling a developer's call and externally enforcing what the Project deems to be the correct interpretation, but it reaches the level of institutionally *derogating* the document. We would not be refraining from stopping the release, we would be explicitly authorizing it. You (appear to) happen to agree with Manoj's understanding of the implications of the DFSG for the lenny release. That's fine; I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong to think that. But that doesn't make it ok for you, or the secretary, to impose this interpretation on the project except *by way of* the GR process. Now *you* are saying that the Secretary needs to run a GR as a pre-condition to do his job. :) Regardless of the implications of whichever foundation document for the upcoming release or whomever I may agree with, I am rather concerned of how Debian deals with this kind of problem and will deal with it in the future. That's why I'm trying to shed some light on hermeneutics here. -- Guilherme de S. Pastore gpast...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 02:32:51PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: If that is the case, why would anyone propose changing a foundation document, and risk failing to meet the 3:1 requirement, when they could simply declare that they interpret it to say what they would like it to say, and have a 1:1 vote? Because they really want to change the goal/values of the project? Ehh.. so what? If I dislike certain projects goals or values and I'd like to enforce another meaning and I can reach this either with a hard-to-reach 3:1 majority or with a temporary easy-to-reach single-majority each time I need it, why should I bother going the hard way? And please don't assume that a majority of developers are insane and want to pervert the project. If that is the case, we're all in a bad situation anyway. :-) Nobody is talking about insanity. As the threads around those firmware thing showed up different people have different opinions. The goals/values might be *similar*, but obvious they are not identical. I'm convinced that a majority of developers would vote against any proposition that contradicts the social contract if there's no (good) rationale for the decision that justifies to temporary shift away from our goals. Most likely, yes. But that is no hard fact, it is a anticipation. Therefore consitutional laws exist, to control that in principle questions this can be proofed. Best Regards, Patrick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri Dec 19 14:24, Raphael Hertzog wrote: It is. Does the resolution say what the new version of the foundation document will look like if it's accepted ? If yes, then it supersedes the document. Otherwise it doesn't. So, if someone proposes a GR saying we will ship the binary NVidia drivers in main and make them the default so that people can use compiz but doesn't say they are overriding the DFSG or provide the wdiff for it then that's fine and only needs 1:1 to pass? Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Hi, On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 02:24:35PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: Superseding a document is easily recognizable: it's when you explicitely say that you're going to change its _content_ (ex: http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_003 ). I wouldn't say that it is that easy. It is. Does the resolution say what the new version of the foundation document will look like if it's accepted ? If yes, then it supersedes the document. Otherwise it doesn't. Well, I could now they No, its not but that wouldn't help us. I guess we need to agree to disagree in this point. My opinion stays the same: The effect of superseding a foundation document and temporary overriding it is the same, except that the latter is timely limited. We do not have rules for temporary overriding a foundation document, therefore we need to apply one of the rules we have. I'm sorry, you don't have to pick one of the existing rules and stretch it to cover some unexpected case. The default rule for position statement applies and it's a GR with a 1:1 ratio. Its not stretching, it is following the spirit of the rule. No. In one case, we alter our (long-term) goal, in the other we don't. No. We _do_ alter a (long-term) goal in both cases. You seem to forget that every point in our DFSG is a goal in itself. The only difference is that the altering becomes undone automagically. Anthony Towns is right. Some people take the social contract as a law. Other take it as a goal. We probably need to clear up this. But even if we consider it as law, the social contract is written in such a way that there's room for interpretation, whereas the constitution is much more precise in all our rules. Well, the room for interpretation is the biggest problem. As we see our interpretation is different for something where no explicit rule exists. There is no default case explicitly spelled out in the document and so I think we should decide consistent with the existing rules. And I really disagree that this is just a Position Statement. IMHO you cannot override rules with Position Statements, you can only spell out how you think rules are to be applied. For example you can say that from your point of view Firmware does match the Source Requirements, because it *is* the preferred form of modification, but you cannot say No, I don't care that we need source for everything, let them (the firmwares) in. So I think we probably should amend the consitution instead of endlessly discussing about our different interpretations. We should decide which rules shall apply for cases that are not yet described in the constitution, like for example the What majority is required to temporary override a DFSG-rule?. And I tell you: I'd vote for a single majority requirement. But I don't think that a single majority requirement is right *right now*. I'm at a loss… I don't know how I can better explain the problem. I'll thy nevertheless: If you consider that we all agree on the goals (and for me this is a given, we all agreed to the social contract), imposing a 3:1 ratio on any vote that should decide how we will handle the next step (that should bring us closer to our goals) is an effective way to block any progress: we've seen at numerous occasions that consensus is almost unachievable and that we need fair decision-making process. Its nice that you try to make your point better understandable, but its not neccessary. I do understand the problem. I know that it is _hard_ to get a 3:1 majority. But it is _possible_ if the (!) majority of the developers have the same opinion. And its exactly what is wanted by having a 3:1 requirement for changing any kind of rule: making it hard to change/replace that rule. If you say that we need a fair decision-making process that implicits that we don't have that already. This means we would need to change/alter the consitution. But we cannot simply forget about it and decide as we see fit, when there are others who have a different opinion. Imposing consensus is okay when it comes to changing/altering our objectives. But it's not okay when it comes to decisions on how we want to reach our objectives. We do not decide about how to reach our objectives. We decide weither we want to ignore a certain objective, or not. That is a big difference. I hope this clears it up. No. It only shows, that we disagree in interpretation of our foundation documents and the constitution. Thats not that bad, because binding is only the interpretation of the majority or existing rules. BTW. I really would like to see a pro-firmware decision, but I have a different view on how easy it should be. Best Regards, Patrick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Matthew Johnson wrote: On Fri Dec 19 14:24, Raphael Hertzog wrote: It is. Does the resolution say what the new version of the foundation document will look like if it's accepted ? If yes, then it supersedes the document. Otherwise it doesn't. So, if someone proposes a GR saying we will ship the binary NVidia drivers in main and make them the default so that people can use compiz but doesn't say they are overriding the DFSG or provide the wdiff for it then that's fine and only needs 1:1 to pass? Yes. But try it, you will see that it won't even get the required seconds to start the vote. And if it does, it will largely fail anyway. As I said, we all have agreed to abide by the social contract, you'd need a serious rationale to convince me that this is coherent with our long-term goal. Either we trust the democracy or we don't. The 3:1 ratio is not here to protect us from insanity, it's only a matter of making sure that we all agree if we want to change the direction in which we're headed. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri Dec 19 16:03, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Matthew Johnson wrote: On Fri Dec 19 14:24, Raphael Hertzog wrote: It is. Does the resolution say what the new version of the foundation document will look like if it's accepted ? If yes, then it supersedes the document. Otherwise it doesn't. So, if someone proposes a GR saying we will ship the binary NVidia drivers in main and make them the default so that people can use compiz but doesn't say they are overriding the DFSG or provide the wdiff for it then that's fine and only needs 1:1 to pass? Yes. But try it, you will see that it won't even get the required seconds to start the vote. And if it does, it will largely fail anyway. Well, sure, I don't think it'll get seconds nor do I think it will pass, that wasn't the point. My point was that it is clearly lunacy to say that it's not a 3:1 option, it's _clearly_ in direct violation of a foundation document. Either it passes but we can't do it anyway because there's an immediate RC bug against it or it must de facto be superceeding a foundation document. Either we trust the democracy or we don't. The 3:1 ratio is not here to protect us from insanity, it's only a matter of making sure that we all agree if we want to change the direction in which we're headed. Yes, and shipping the NVidia drivers in main would be such a change of direction, whether exact wording of the GR option claims to modify the DFSG or not. Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19 2008, Raphael Hertzog wrote: And please don't assume that a majority of developers are insane and want to pervert the project. If that is the case, we're all in a bad situation anyway. :-) Insanity is subjective. In some sense, some of the the interpretations of our foundation documents brings to my mind shades of NewSpeak. I know that is not how other people meant it to be; so we have enough differences in opinion that acts of inasnity by some are rational behaviour by others, and we have grown to the point that there is no single definition of insanity that would govern the statement above. I have seen either side in the firmware debate staunchly believe the other side was, err, insane. manoj -- I am not a politician and my other habits are also good. Ward Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19 2008, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Matthew Johnson wrote: On Fri Dec 19 14:24, Raphael Hertzog wrote: It is. Does the resolution say what the new version of the foundation document will look like if it's accepted ? If yes, then it supersedes the document. Otherwise it doesn't. So, if someone proposes a GR saying we will ship the binary NVidia drivers in main and make them the default so that people can use compiz but doesn't say they are overriding the DFSG or provide the wdiff for it then that's fine and only needs 1:1 to pass? Yes. But try it, you will see that it won't even get the required seconds to start the vote. And if it does, it will largely fail anyway. As I said, we all have agreed to abide by the social contract, you'd need a serious rationale to convince me that this is coherent with our long-term goal. Hmm. All that says is that you have drawn the line at one point, not that the project has. I find it hard to see how shipping non-free blobs in main is coherent with our long-term goal; but obviously people in the project do not. Therefore, I find it unconvincing to say that people will behave or vote a particular way. Either we trust the democracy or we don't. The 3:1 ratio is not here to protect us from insanity, it's only a matter of making sure that we all agree if we want to change the direction in which we're headed. My take on it was that if we resolve to do something that is contradiction of the foundation document, the only logical way to interpret that is to accept that we are, if only temporarily, changing the direction we are headed in. We might intend to turn back to the path later, but for not, the direction is being changed. manoj -- In Hollywood, if you don't have happiness, you send out for it. Rex Reed Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 02:12:01PM +, Matthew Johnson wrote: On Fri Dec 19 14:24, Raphael Hertzog wrote: It is. Does the resolution say what the new version of the foundation document will look like if it's accepted ? If yes, then it supersedes the document. Otherwise it doesn't. So, if someone proposes a GR saying we will ship the binary NVidia drivers in main and make them the default so that people can use compiz but doesn't say they are overriding the DFSG or provide the wdiff for it then that's fine and only needs 1:1 to pass? Yes, that's perfectly fine - and also non-binding, so the 80% of the DDs who didn't vote, the 47% of the voters who voted against it, and the 2% of the voters who didn't read before voting can ignore that position statement and continue doing things just as they were before. Just like, *constitutionally*, any individual developer can already ignore the Social Contract or DFSG at their discretion. This is not an argument that it's ok for developers to ignore the SC. I'm merely pointing out that adherence to the SC does *not* follow from the constitution, so *constitutional* arguments about why decisions to set aside the SC should require the same supermajority as superseding the SC are invalid! So please stop trying to use the constitution for an easy out when you want to override the conscience of your fellow developers. You still need a simple majority of people *in favor* of your GR in order to accomplish that; blocking an expression of the majority opinion by imposing a supermajority requirement that doesn't follow from the letter of the constitution does not accomplish that. The default is still that each developer is going to do what they personally believe is right. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri Dec 19 08:58, Steve Langasek wrote: On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 02:12:01PM +, Matthew Johnson wrote: On Fri Dec 19 14:24, Raphael Hertzog wrote: It is. Does the resolution say what the new version of the foundation document will look like if it's accepted ? If yes, then it supersedes the document. Otherwise it doesn't. So, if someone proposes a GR saying we will ship the binary NVidia drivers in main and make them the default so that people can use compiz but doesn't say they are overriding the DFSG or provide the wdiff for it then that's fine and only needs 1:1 to pass? Yes, that's perfectly fine - and also non-binding, so the 80% of the DDs who didn't vote, the 47% of the voters who voted against it, and the 2% of the voters who didn't read before voting can ignore that position statement and continue doing things just as they were before. So... you're saying there's no point at all in such a GR? The GR says we will do X but even after we pass it we still can't do X because it would contravene the SC or DFSG? How is that a useful thing at all? What's the point? Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Matthew Johnson mj...@debian.org writes: So... you're saying there's no point at all in such a GR? The GR says we will do X but even after we pass it we still can't do X because it would contravene the SC or DFSG? How is that a useful thing at all? What's the point? Here's the way I see it, which I think is similar to how Steve is seeing it: The only point of non-binding resolutions of the sense of the project is to try to persuade people who might otherwise not think that's what the project wants. They don't, in and of themselves, *do* anything. To make a change that's binding on all developers going forward, you have to alter a foundation document and get a 3:1 majority. However, you can also override *individual decisions*, and that requires only a simple majority. So it would be possible, under the constitution, to get NVidia drivers into main with a set of 1:1 delegate overrides: you override the ftp-master's decision that it's non-free, and then you override the release team's decision that it's non-free, and so forth. Those overrides aren't binding on any future developer decisions, only on those specific ones. I agree wholeheartedly with Raphael: I don't see this as any real threat. Even people who think we should ship NVidia drivers in main aren't going to vote in sufficient numbers for a GR that says they meet the DFSG. (And if they did, we have other problems that voting rules aren't going to fix, no matter what rules we're trying to apply.) -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri Dec 19 12:04, Russ Allbery wrote: Here's the way I see it, which I think is similar to how Steve is seeing it: The only point of non-binding resolutions of the sense of the project is to try to persuade people who might otherwise not think that's what the project wants. They don't, in and of themselves, *do* anything. But... _how_ can it be the case that having the NVidia drivers in main (sorry to keep on with this example, but I want something where it's clear whether it meets the DFSG or not) is what the project wants when it's clearly going against our foundation documents. There's an inherent contradition. The SC says we won't ship non-free stuff and the GR says actually we will ship non-free stuff (except we can't really because the SC says we can't). It makes no sense. Nvidia drivers are just a placeholder here. Insert firmware or anything else which might have support. I wanted an example that was clear I'm talking about definitely non-free stuff, not arguing whether binary vectors in header files are defacto source form. However, you can also override *individual decisions*, and that requires only a simple majority. So it would be possible, under the constitution, to get NVidia drivers into main with a set of 1:1 delegate overrides: you override the ftp-master's decision that it's non-free, and then you override the release team's decision that it's non-free, and so forth. Those overrides aren't binding on any future developer decisions, only on those specific ones. See, I see no way to justify this position. 1:1 delegate/developer overrides are for two choices where either would meet the foundation documents. Including wordpress in etch, for example (which went to the TC rather than GR), declassifying debian-private, overriding Joerg's membership proposal. In all these cases either course of action meets the foundation documents. Voting to allow us to ship non-free stuff is completely different. If we had those votes you suggest then I would immediately be filing a serious bug against the package because it is in violation of Debian policy. I agree wholeheartedly with Raphael: I don't see this as any real threat. Even people who think we should ship NVidia drivers in main aren't going to vote in sufficient numbers for a GR that says they meet the DFSG. (And if they did, we have other problems that voting rules aren't going to fix, no matter what rules we're trying to apply.) NVidia drivers are just a placeholder to illustrate the point. You definitely _can't_ claim that they meet the DFSG (but you could change it to allow them anyway). However, you do raise something here which people may be confusing. A vote that said we will assume that firmware is in source form is very different to one which says we don't care whether or not it is source form. The former says we keep the DFSG as it is, but we are asserting that they comply unless we can prove otherwise and the latter says even if we can prove otherwise we will change the DFSG so that it is allowed The former is 1:1 and the latter is 3:1. It may be a subtle difference, but it's an important one, because it sets precedent for future issues where the difference is not so subtle. Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Matthew Johnson mj...@debian.org writes: On Fri Dec 19 12:04, Russ Allbery wrote: The only point of non-binding resolutions of the sense of the project is to try to persuade people who might otherwise not think that's what the project wants. They don't, in and of themselves, *do* anything. But... _how_ can it be the case that having the NVidia drivers in main (sorry to keep on with this example, but I want something where it's clear whether it meets the DFSG or not) is what the project wants when it's clearly going against our foundation documents. There's an inherent contradition. The SC says we won't ship non-free stuff and the GR says actually we will ship non-free stuff (except we can't really because the SC says we can't). It makes no sense. There's nothing in the consititution that prohibits passing nonsensical GRs or GRs that contradict foundation documents, as long as they don't actually alter the foundation documents. Nvidia drivers are just a placeholder here. Insert firmware or anything else which might have support. I wanted an example that was clear I'm talking about definitely non-free stuff, not arguing whether binary vectors in header files are defacto source form. Unfortunately, by simplifying, you're removing the factor that makes this vote so problematic, namely the disagreement over whether what the GR says is contradictory or not. One of the many sides in the current debate is the position that putting source-less firmware into main does *not* contradict the DFSG. However, you can also override *individual decisions*, and that requires only a simple majority. So it would be possible, under the constitution, to get NVidia drivers into main with a set of 1:1 delegate overrides: you override the ftp-master's decision that it's non-free, and then you override the release team's decision that it's non-free, and so forth. Those overrides aren't binding on any future developer decisions, only on those specific ones. See, I see no way to justify this position. I'm justifying it by reading the text of the constitution, rather than by trying to apply some sort of common-sense guidelines. :) 1:1 delegate/developer overrides are for two choices where either would meet the foundation documents. The constitution doesn't say this. This would be a perfectly reasonable governance process, but it's not the governance process we have right now. The only limit written into the consititution on what a delegate override can be used to decide is that it has to be a decision authorized by the powers of the delegate, and determining the meaning and application of foundation documents, since it's not called out anywhere in the constitution, falls to the normal decision-making process and hence is a decision authorized by the powers of delegates. Voting to allow us to ship non-free stuff is completely different. If we had those votes you suggest then I would immediately be filing a serious bug against the package because it is in violation of Debian policy. And with a delegate override, the project with a 1:1 GR can force adding a lenny-ignore tag to that bug. You'd need a ton of delegate override GRs to do this sort of thing in practice, which is yet another reason why it's not a real threat, since there are many separate delegates who have the power to stop it from happening. But I don't see anything in the consititution that would prohibit the project, in theory, from passing all those overrides. NVidia drivers are just a placeholder to illustrate the point. You definitely _can't_ claim that they meet the DFSG (but you could change it to allow them anyway). However, you do raise something here which people may be confusing. A vote that said we will assume that firmware is in source form is very different to one which says we don't care whether or not it is source form. The former says we keep the DFSG as it is, but we are asserting that they comply unless we can prove otherwise and the latter says even if we can prove otherwise we will change the DFSG so that it is allowed The former is 1:1 and the latter is 3:1. I agree with this, since the latter says that you're going to change the DFSG. But the firmware case doesn't necessarily say that. One of the positions held about firmware is that it's not a program provided by Debian in the sense used in the SC and DFSG. Holding that position doesn't require changing the DFSG. Furthermore, by my reading of the constitution, even if a delegate override or a position statement clearly and obviously contradicted the DFSG, as long as it doesn't actually change or set aside the DFSG, it's still just a 1:1 majority. Success of the GR would overturn that decision, even in a direction that contradicts the DFSG, because in practice there's no higher authority in Debian to declare that the decision contradicts the DFSG and a majority of developers just said, in effect, that it doesn't. This is the root of the
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri Dec 19 13:08, Russ Allbery wrote: There's nothing in the consititution that prohibits passing nonsensical GRs or GRs that contradict foundation documents, as long as they don't actually alter the foundation documents. Given a ballot option which does not explicitly specify whether or not it is a. pointless or b. overriding the foundation document with which it clearly conflicts I think for sanity's sake it should be assumed to be the latter and hence have a 3:1 majority requirement. Either that or the secretary should refuse to list any options which do not explicitly resolve their conflict with a foundation document Nvidia drivers are just a placeholder here. Insert firmware or anything else which might have support. I wanted an example that was clear I'm talking about definitely non-free stuff, not arguing whether binary vectors in header files are defacto source form. Unfortunately, by simplifying, you're removing the factor that makes this vote so problematic, namely the disagreement over whether what the GR says is contradictory or not. One of the many sides in the current debate is the position that putting source-less firmware into main does *not* contradict the DFSG. Indeed and the option which said that was 1:1. The options which said that even though they contradicted the DFSG we would let them through were 3:1 NVidia drivers are just a placeholder to illustrate the point. You definitely _can't_ claim that they meet the DFSG (but you could change it to allow them anyway). However, you do raise something here which people may be confusing. A vote that said we will assume that firmware is in source form is very different to one which says we don't care whether or not it is source form. The former says we keep the DFSG as it is, but we are asserting that they comply unless we can prove otherwise and the latter says even if we can prove otherwise we will change the DFSG so that it is allowed The former is 1:1 and the latter is 3:1. I agree with this, since the latter says that you're going to change the DFSG. But the firmware case doesn't necessarily say that. One of the positions held about firmware is that it's not a program provided by Debian in the sense used in the SC and DFSG. Holding that position doesn't require changing the DFSG. Sure, that's fine, but not what I'm talking about This is the root of the argument, really, and is what I'm trying to get across. Foundation documents do not have some sort of Platonic True Meaning that exists outside of the governance process. The words mean what people with the authority to make decisions decide they mean, and those decisions have no special protection or role in the constitution. Therefore, in a very real sense the DFSG and SC mean whatever a simple majority of developers decide that they mean in each specific case where a GR is applied. Then the 3:1 requirement is nonsense and the SC and DFSG effectively optional. I don't believe that was the intention when they were drafted. Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Matthew Johnson mj...@debian.org writes: On Fri Dec 19 13:08, Russ Allbery wrote: This is the root of the argument, really, and is what I'm trying to get across. Foundation documents do not have some sort of Platonic True Meaning that exists outside of the governance process. The words mean what people with the authority to make decisions decide they mean, and those decisions have no special protection or role in the constitution. Therefore, in a very real sense the DFSG and SC mean whatever a simple majority of developers decide that they mean in each specific case where a GR is applied. Then the 3:1 requirement is nonsense No, a 3:1 requirement is still required to change or replace those documents, and as long as they're not changed or replaced, they will have a powerful persuasive effect on voting. This was also Raphael's point. We all agreed to follow them. This is not a negligible effect. and the SC and DFSG effectively optional. Majority rule is not equivalent to optional. I don't believe that was the intention when they were drafted. Whether it's the intent or not, I believe what I've spelled out is the practical effect. If you want some other effect, you *have* to spell out who decides what the meaning is. You cannot rely on everyone just knowing the meaning. People aren't going to agree, and someone has to pick which meaning is correct. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:50:42PM +, Matthew Johnson wrote: Then the 3:1 requirement is nonsense and the SC and DFSG effectively optional. I don't believe that was the intention when they were drafted. They were drafted before the constitution was and their binding power does *not* flow *from* the constitution. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19 2008, Russ Allbery wrote: However, you can also override *individual decisions*, and that requires only a simple majority. So it would be possible, under the constitution, to get NVidia drivers into main with a set of 1:1 delegate overrides: you override the ftp-master's decision that it's non-free, and then you override the release team's decision that it's non-free, and so forth. Those overrides aren't binding on any future developer decisions, only on those specific ones. So your position is essentially that the foundation documents are not really binding on any developer, and even in cases where the developer thinks they are binding, a simple majoiry can effectively vacate that. Does not sound like much of a contract to me, and I must reject this interpretation. manoj -- In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice. Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19 2008, Steve Langasek wrote: On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 09:50:42PM +, Matthew Johnson wrote: Then the 3:1 requirement is nonsense and the SC and DFSG effectively optional. I don't believe that was the intention when they were drafted. They were drafted before the constitution was and their binding power does *not* flow *from* the constitution. Sorry, no. I do not find that logically follows. Before we accepted the constitution, the allocation of powers was all ad-hoc. We even had project leaders and delegates before the constitution too. When the constitution was adopted, the ad-hoc power structure was swept away, and the new power structure detailed in the constitution came into effect. Saying that we had DPL's and ftp-masters before so theya re above the constitution does not hold. Heck, we had developers before, so those of us who were inducted in before we had a constitution are somehow not bound by it, unless we voted in favour? I do not see the logic here. manoj -- If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry. -- Dave Barry Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19 2008, Russ Allbery wrote: Matthew Johnson mj...@debian.org writes: Furthermore, by my reading of the constitution, even if a delegate override or a position statement clearly and obviously contradicted the DFSG, as long as it doesn't actually change or set aside the DFSG, it's still just a 1:1 majority. Success of the GR would overturn that decision, even in a direction that contradicts the DFSG, because in practice there's no higher authority in Debian to declare that the decision contradicts the DFSG and a majority of developers just said, in effect, that it doesn't. This sounds like weaseling around our foundation documents. We won't do what the social contract says, but in out NewSpeak, we are not changing the SC. We are, uhhh, just going to do something else, but, err, the contract is valid. While the constitution might not prohibit this behaviour, I would find actually doing this very dishonest, and just plain lying. If we have sunk so low as to require some entity to keep us away from NewSpeak, so be it, I just find that makes trusting the project impossible. manoj -- New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within. Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 05:09:32PM +, Matthew Johnson wrote: Yes, that's perfectly fine - and also non-binding, so the 80% of the DDs who didn't vote, the 47% of the voters who voted against it, and the 2% of the voters who didn't read before voting can ignore that position statement and continue doing things just as they were before. So... you're saying there's no point at all in such a GR? The GR says we will do X but even after we pass it we still can't do X because it would contravene the SC or DFSG? How is that a useful thing at all? What's the point? The point in *allowing* this is to have a simple system by which the project's majority view can be expressed. On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 08:20:30PM +, Matthew Johnson wrote: But... _how_ can it be the case that having the NVidia drivers in main (sorry to keep on with this example, but I want something where it's clear whether it meets the DFSG or not) is what the project wants when it's clearly going against our foundation documents. There's an inherent contradition. The SC says we won't ship non-free stuff and the GR says actually we will ship non-free stuff (except we can't really because the SC says we can't). It makes no sense. In this hypothetical case which is not at all analogous to the complex issue currently under discussion: if a majority of voters vote that we should put Nvidia drivers in main, then your fundamental problem is that you have a majority of people (or at least, voters) in Debian who think it's ok to put Nvidia drivers in main. Your only real choices, then, are to persuade them that they're wrong, live with it, drive them off, or leave. The other option you're proposing here, to prevent them from doing what they want to unless they have a 3:1 majority, reduces to coerce the majority to do what you say they should do, even though they don't think you're right. Do you really think that's a solution to the above pathological scenario? NVidia drivers are just a placeholder to illustrate the point. You definitely _can't_ claim that they meet the DFSG (but you could change it to allow them anyway). However, you do raise something here which people may be confusing. A vote that said we will assume that firmware is in source form is very different to one which says we don't care whether or not it is source form. The former says we keep the DFSG as it is, but we are asserting that they comply unless we can prove otherwise and the latter says even if we can prove otherwise we will change the DFSG so that it is allowed The former is 1:1 and the latter is 3:1. It may be a subtle difference, but it's an important one, because it sets precedent for future issues where the difference is not so subtle. I think the difference between the two is that in the former we're blatantly lying to ourselves about whether we're in compliance and rewarding people for not providing evidence of non-compliance by giving them a timely release in return, and in the latter is being honest with ourselves and our users. I don't see why we should be encouraged to lie to ourselves. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Manoj Srivastava (2008-12-17 17:02 -0600) wrote: If there is sufficient support, we could also scrap the current vote, change our ballot, add options to it, or something, and restart the vote, but that would need a strong grass roots support (I do not think the secretary has the power to do so). I don't know if non-developers' opinions count but since from the outside Debian seems to be pretty much an open community I'll voice my opinion anyway. I've been following the firmware and voting discussion very closely and I think that changing and restarting the vote would _definitely_ be the right thing. In a democratic decision-making it's too dangerous to conduct a ballot which (many) people can't trust. I think this is clearly the case here: many seemingly intelligent people with good arguments are unhappy with the ballot, how it is organized etc., and will likely have hard time trusting the results. This ballot may potentially cause damage for Debian. So, no matter whose fault the current situation is or who has the constitutional power to do what. I think the most important thing is to act towards maintaining people's trust to the decision-making process. May I suggest restarting the discussion and vote? Please? (Just an opinion from a happy Debian Lenny user. Thank you for creating and working for such a great operating system.) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Tue, Dec 16 2008, Richard Hartmann wrote: I think he had the implied accussation from the GR's text in mind. Option 1 is to 'Reaffirm the Social Contract', which means that dissenting votes weaken and/or break the SC. No idea if that is on purpose or a honest mistake, but I am assuming good faith with Manoj as with everyone else. The title for ballot lines are proposed by the proposer when titling their proposals. Ask the proposer. Stop this. “It's not me, it's the proposer” is childish. It's not too difficult to see whether a summary is fair or not. It's not too difficult to acknowledge the problem when others have pointed it out. Have you ever tried to reach consensus in you secretarial work instead of doing only what you feel like doing? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Manoj Srivastava wrote: Also, resolving to do something that overrides a foundation document, in whole or in part, is equivalent to creating a ew version of the foundation document, and adhereing to that. No. It's simply taking a decision on the best way to reach our (long-term) goal as defined by our foundations documents. And it's always a compromise as we have never been able to say that we're done with our quest to freeness. I am fairly comfortable in the grounding in the constitution powers bit. You shouldn't. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, 18 Dec 2008, Raphael Hertzog wrote: On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Tue, Dec 16 2008, Richard Hartmann wrote: I think he had the implied accussation from the GR's text in mind. Option 1 is to 'Reaffirm the Social Contract', which means that dissenting votes weaken and/or break the SC. No idea if that is on purpose or a honest mistake, but I am assuming good faith with Manoj as with everyone else. The title for ballot lines are proposed by the proposer when titling their proposals. Ask the proposer. Stop this. “It's not me, it's the proposer” is childish. It's not too difficult to see whether a summary is fair or not. It's not too difficult to acknowledge the problem when others have pointed it out. Considering the sheer level of vitriol and claims of malfeance directed at the Secretary, it's no wonder the Secretary has decided to utilize the title proposed by the proposer and defer to the proposer in matters of the ballot title. Furthermore, we're talking about a *TITLE* here, not a *SUMMARY*. There's no way that four words can possibly summarize a 111 word proposal. Have you ever tried to reach consensus in you secretarial work instead of doing only what you feel like doing? The ballot was and its options were made public with a chance for everyone to review and make comments well before the vote. You made comments, and in 874p1a6l0n@anzu.internal.golden-gryphon.com were instructed to get the approval of the proposer of the option in order for the secretary to change the title of the option. FWICT, you either did not attempt to do so, or none of the people who proposed or seconded the proposal agreed with your suggested change. That's of course your option, but berating the Secretary for failing to try to reach consensus when you haven't either after having been asked to do so seems disingenuous. Finally, I would seriously hope that anyone who has voting rights in Debian is fully capable of completely ignoring the title of the ballot option and actually reading the text of the issue under discussion, as no ballot title can possibly convey the entirety of the issue under discussion nor the portions of the issue that are of most significant to each voter. I know I do due dilligence before voting; if anyone can't for whatever reason, vote a blank ballot. Don Armstrong -- To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself -- Albert Einstein http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008, Manoj Srivastava wrote: This is an hypothetical case you're making; most people think the issues are orthogonal. Can these people explain why they think so? ANd it would help if they could say why the arguments I present to say it is a single issue are incorrect. Just opinions do not lead to consensus. You're asking for what people think but condemn mere opinions? Anyway, the rationale is that voting on whether the release team is free to decide how each release is crafted has nothing to do with what Debian think of firmwares. The latter can influence their decisions, just like ftpmasters, but the former gives them latitude on any kind of issues (not just firmwares) to craft a release, or do any kind of delegated work. Unrelated to Debian's views on firmwares, some people also want to relax what we allow in lenny; this is another orthogonal decision. So there's clearly room for at least 3 different votes; one about powers/rights of the release team, one about firmwares, one about lenny. While I'm at it here's my position on the three topics: I personally wouldn't have needed to put the powers/rights of the release team in question, but given what I've read in various threads here, I would like to express my support to them. I did want Debian to take a position on sourceless firmware complying with the DFSG, but I now understand it wont bring us very far as we'll require support of non-modifiable firmwares anyway. I don't strongly care about a specific decision on lenny, but given the lenny timeline, the current pressure on release matters, and other options I've seen in these threads, I'm leaning towards trying to remove some lenny blockers. It might be an useful vote to speed up the release of lenny, but it might also be a release killing vote such as we wont release lenny with DFSG violations. I hope a lenny ballot wouldn't have such an option, but it might. -- Loïc Minier -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Wed, Dec 17 2008, Luk Claes wrote: Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Tue, Dec 16 2008, Matthew Woodcraft wrote: If the proposer of vote/2003/vote_0003 had intended it to give the Secretary power to impose supermajority requirements on the grounds that an option conflicts with a foundation document, one would have expected him to have said so explicitly. So, in your opinion, which decision making entity is empowered by the constitution to make decisions about super majority requirements? What are the constraints on their ability to decide on this? What should they be looking at, apart from the constitution, to decide whether a super majority rule should apply? I would think the explicit overriding or removal of parts of foundation documents aka changing them as I read it in the constitution (but apparently my interpretation differs from yours). Parse error. Which entity did you mean? Or are you just answering the last question? Does that mean we can just not follow the foundation documents by doing something different, but just not saying explicitly we are over riding them? Nope, position statements are more like statements telling how to interprete foundation documents, noone is trying to change them. Cheers Luk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, 18 Dec 2008, Don Armstrong wrote: You made comments, and in 874p1a6l0n@anzu.internal.golden-gryphon.com were instructed to get the approval of the proposer of the option in order for the secretary to change the title of the option. FWICT, you either did not attempt to do so, or none of the people who proposed or seconded the proposal agreed with your suggested change. That's of course your option, but berating the Secretary for failing to try to reach consensus when you haven't either after having been asked to do so seems disingenuous. The proposer Robert Millan has been following the discussions from the beginning (with the volume of mails he sent, it's quite obvious) and he could have responded as well. I agree that Robert is to be blamed as much as Manoj. The constitution says clearly: “The person who calls for a vote states what they believe the wordings of the resolution and any relevant amendments are, and consequently what form the ballot should take. However, the final decision on the form of ballot(s) is the Secretary's - see 7.1(1), 7.1(3) and A.3(4).” Finally, I would seriously hope that anyone who has voting rights in Debian is fully capable of completely ignoring the title of the ballot option and actually reading the text of the issue under discussion, as no ballot title can possibly convey the entirety of the issue under discussion nor the portions of the issue that are of most significant to each voter. I know I do due dilligence before voting; if anyone can't for whatever reason, vote a blank ballot. I do read the proposals, but the title has to reflect the content of the proposal and should somehow refer to the differientating factor with the amendments. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Dec 18, 2008, at 8:51 AM, Teemu Likonen wrote: Manoj Srivastava (2008-12-17 17:02 -0600) wrote: If there is sufficient support, we could also scrap the current vote, change our ballot, add options to it, or something, and restart the vote, but that would need a strong grass roots support (I do not think the secretary has the power to do so). I don't know if non-developers' opinions count but since from the outside Debian seems to be pretty much an open community I'll voice my opinion anyway. I've been following the firmware and voting discussion very closely and I think that changing and restarting the vote would _definitely_ be the right thing. As another non-DD but active debian packager hoping to become a DD, I would also like to voice my support, in a grassroots style, for re- structuring the general resolution(s). Jeremiah -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 04:45:02PM +1100, Russell Coker wrote: It seems that the grass-roots support for doing something quite different to the current vote includes me, Brian, and quite a few bloggers on Planet Debian. I don't like the current vote either and wouldn't mind if it was canceled. My suggestion is to do a very simple vote first, with only two choices: a) continue with the release process and don't wait for further GRs Of course this means, effectively, that we do trust the release team and other developers involved in the release process b) wait with the lenny release until we made decisions on the open issues This means that we don't want do be hasty, take our time to agree what the open issues are, how they could be resolved and what further GRs are necessary to finally decide on these matters. The third option, further discussion, could be included on the ballot for completeness, but as it is roughly equivalent to I don't want to delay lenny but I don't want to release it in it's current state either, it's only for people who really can't decide what they want :-) IMHO we have to bite the bullet: Either we release lenny without agreeing on the DFSG issues first, or we delay lenny. As the vote suggested above is only sensible if lenny isn't delayed by the vote itself, it would be good to start it ASAP and do it with a shortened voting period. Jan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 04:56:47PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: If you do so, you need to add to the constitution some statement about who decides what the foundation documents mean in the context of developer decisions, since right now the constititution does not give that authority to anyone and hence it devolves to the individual developers doing their work, as possibly overridden by a delegate decision or a GR (none of which require a 3:1 majority). Abstractly considered, not pointing fingers at anyone, as usual, the project overruling a developer or delegate going against the constitution is by far different from vouching for that move. If a single developer has a bizarre interpretation of the foundation documents and violates them in their work, that's one thing. The Debian Project, through its official decision-making body, the developers, by means of general resolution, deciding to go against a foundation document is a whole different issue, and it should be treated like an amendment, requiring 3:1 supermajority. It is in the basics of constitutional law. We cannot explicitly decide not to enforce the text of a foundation document, making an exception to its application, without reaching the quorum that would be necessary to excluding that text entirely and forever. For a broader and easier to understand example, guess what would happen if Congress needed a 3:1 supermajority to amend a country's constitution, but only needed a 1:1 majority to say that actually, for the next couple of months, you don't need all this civil liberties crap, and we are suspending it. Which, just to make the previous point clearer, is quite different from a police officer deciding that document is not worth the paper it was written on and disregarding what it states. Social anomaly versus institutions. Cheers, -- Guilherme de S. Pastore gpast...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:28:12PM +0100, Jan Niehusmann wrote: I don't like the current vote either and wouldn't mind if it was canceled. My suggestion is to do a very simple vote first, with only two choices: a) continue with the release process and don't wait for further GRs Of course this means, effectively, that we do trust the release team and other developers involved in the release process b) wait with the lenny release until we made decisions on the open issues This means that we don't want do be hasty, take our time to agree what the open issues are, how they could be resolved and what further GRs are necessary to finally decide on these matters. The third option, further discussion, could be included on the ballot for completeness, but as it is roughly equivalent to I don't want to delay lenny but I don't want to release it in it's current state either, it's only for people who really can't decide what they want :-) IMHO we have to bite the bullet: Either we release lenny without agreeing on the DFSG issues first, or we delay lenny. As the vote suggested above is only sensible if lenny isn't delayed by the vote itself, it would be good to start it ASAP and do it with a shortened voting period. I support this suggestion and would like to see the current vote abandoned. Dominic. -- Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/ PGP key 5178E2A5 from the.earth.li (keyserver,web,email) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
- Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: No, I'm pretty sure you're the only one harping on /that/ point. None of the GR proposals mandate a particular interpretation of the legality of any component of the archive, the release team has never indicated that they intended to ignore legal problems when releasing, and popular vote is a stupid way to decide questions of law. It was, and is, my perception that people were trying to get sourceless binary executables into the distribution and I took exception with that. You may question my comedic MAME argument but I think it clearly illustrated the point that something doens't stop being software just because it is on a ROM and executed by a weird processor. The fine points of how a binaries are source argument interacts with the GPL is secondary to my primary complaint. Now, I understand that some of these binaries are, like, 64 bytes of code (or data?). That really does suck but I don't think we should say short mysterious sequences of bytes with undetermined function are allowed to accommodate a few weird drivers out of convenience. That's my opinion and if that makes me a zealot, fine. Guilty as charged. I do want to say, I still really appreciate all the work that you and everyone else involved in the release and FTP process does. I love Debian and use it every single day (practically every hour). Sorry that I'm compelled to be a zealot and bum your release high. Duty calls. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Manoj Srivastava wrote: I was just thinking of postposing the end-of-vote cron job, so no re-voting would be needed. If there is sufficient support, we could also scrap the current vote, change our ballot, add options to it, or something, and restart the vote, but that would need a strong grass roots support (I do not think the secretary has the power to do so). I would like to see an updated announcement outlining the change in the voting timeframe. This way there is (hopefully) less confusion when the end of vote cron job does not come when expected (as per the original call for votes). I woud like to see this vote run its course. I see no need to modify the ballot at all. -- John H. Robinson, IV jaq...@debian.org http WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above, sbih.org ( )(:[ as apparently my cats have learned how to type. spiders.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Hi, just so that I've said this here too: On Donnerstag, 18. Dezember 2008, gregor herrmann wrote: On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 9:02 PM, Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org wrote: If there is sufficient support, we could also scrap the current vote, change our ballot, add options to it, or something, and restart the vote, but that would need a strong grass roots support (I do not think the secretary has the power to do so). I support stopping this GR and starting all over, if this is possible. I won't repeat all the reasons why this GR is seen as problematic; they have been named at great length already. I just want to add that even if we finish this GR we won't have the questions solved since we will continue to discuss what the winning Choice #n actually means, and this won't do the project any good. As far as I understand from reading the immense threads, most people (me included) don't want more options in the ballot. We want separate ballots for separate subjects. I agree on this point, and I think your proposal is a good starting point for a new start in general - thanks! [..] I hope that you can take that into consideration. +1 And so far I have yet not seen anyone claiming this is a good vote (so I assume basically everybody will be happy with a restart ;-) regards, Holger PS.: plus, I was deeply sadened to see Manojs resignation mail. Thank *you* for all the fish! signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Brian May dijo [Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 11:45:47AM +1100]: (...) A) If we trust or not the release team on making the right choices of which bugs to ignore and which not (regardless of this being firmware issues or what have you). This is from now on, not just for Lenny. B) If we want to allow sourceless firmware in Debian, defining firmware in a way that doesn't give a waiver to anything else without source. This is also from now on, not just for Lenny. But it's only for firmware, not for everything with licensing problems. C) If we want to allow stuff with some problems into Lenny, as we already did for Sarge and Etch. (...) I think the concern is, what if the results conflict? e.g. if we get a No for (C) but Yes for (A). We trust the release team to make the right choices but we don't trust them to make the right choices for Lenny? My suggestion would be to vote for (C) first, and then decide the wording on (A) and (B) depending on the outcome of (C). In which case, even if there is a conflict, the wording can clarify if the second vote overrides or doesn't override the first result. I agree with your view, as it would also free the release team to move forward the release while we continue discussiong A and B. I would _really_ love to get this settled for good (i.e. to solve A and B as well). Still... Everything lends itself to interpretation. In the case you mention, if a GR says No for C, then Lenny will be delayed until said problems are solved. And if then we vote Yes for A, they will know the firmware issue is off-limits (via a GR, of course) - They will have the power to mark lenny-ignore a FTBFS if you may, but not a non-free firmware inclusion. Which is still an outcome. -- Gunnar Wolf - gw...@gwolf.org - (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244 PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23 Fingerprint: 0C79 D2D1 2C4E 9CE4 5973 F800 D80E F35A 8BB5 27AF -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 05:54:13AM -0600, Guilherme de S. Pastore wrote: It is in the basics of constitutional law. We cannot explicitly decide not to enforce the text of a foundation document, making an exception to its application, without reaching the quorum that would be necessary to excluding that text entirely and forever. Enforcement of the foundation documents is not defined in the constitution, so no, this is not a question of constitutional law. For a broader and easier to understand example, guess what would happen if Congress needed a 3:1 supermajority to amend a country's constitution, but only needed a 1:1 majority to say that actually, for the next couple of months, you don't need all this civil liberties crap, and we are suspending it. I'm not sure if you're being deliberately ironic here, or if you're just somehow unfamiliar with the past 7 years of US history? -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
- Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: Enforcement of the foundation documents is not defined in the constitution, so no, this is not a question of constitutional law. I'm not clear what you are saying here. Are you saying that the foundation documents do not imply any required behavior for project members? To me the foundation documents are foundational in the sense of the Bill of Rights. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 03:14:55PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 05:54:13AM -0600, Guilherme de S. Pastore wrote: It is in the basics of constitutional law. We cannot explicitly decide not to enforce the text of a foundation document, making an exception to its application, without reaching the quorum that would be necessary to excluding that text entirely and forever. Enforcement of the foundation documents is not defined in the constitution, so no, this is not a question of constitutional law. Avoiding getting too technical about it, it is still illogical. You cannot produce the same effects of an amendment, even though temporarily, bypassing the requirements to an amendment. Creating an exception by means of General Resolution is equivalent to adding a little line to the document stating that this does not apply to the Lenny release, except for the fact that we leave it in another official document for convenience reasons. Getting a bit more technical, though, but shortly, it does not need to be in one single holy document with C O N S T I T U T I O N spelled on the header to be constitutional (as in constitutional level). I'm not sure if you're being deliberately ironic here, or if you're just somehow unfamiliar with the past 7 years of US history? Not ironic at all, I do not believe it to be useful at this point on debian-vote :) And I would have to admit a little lack of interest in following the past 7 years of US political history, since I was 11 by the time this timeframe started and had not seriously considered going to Law school either. The way you mention it, however, does not make it sound like a role model (just inferring!). -- Guilherme de S. Pastore gpast...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 08:15:25PM -0600, Guilherme de S. Pastore wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 03:14:55PM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 05:54:13AM -0600, Guilherme de S. Pastore wrote: It is in the basics of constitutional law. We cannot explicitly decide not to enforce the text of a foundation document, making an exception to its application, without reaching the quorum that would be necessary to excluding that text entirely and forever. Enforcement of the foundation documents is not defined in the constitution, so no, this is not a question of constitutional law. Avoiding getting too technical about it, it is still illogical. You cannot produce the same effects of an amendment, even though temporarily, bypassing the requirements to an amendment. Creating an exception by means of General Resolution is equivalent to adding a little line to the document stating that this does not apply to the Lenny release, except for the fact that we leave it in another official document for convenience reasons. If the effect in question here is the release of lenny with sourceless firmware included in main, you certainly can get that effect without an amendment - precisely because under the constitution and in the absence of a GR to the contrary, interpretation and enforcement of the foundation documents devolves to the individual developers whose work it touches. No other body for enforcement of the DFSG is defined in the constitution. It's up to individual developers to determine for themselves whether their actions are in keeping with the DFSG/SC, and with the promise they made when they became DDs to uphold those principles in their Debian work. No one else, with the exception of the project as a whole by way of GR[1], has the power to decree that a developer's understanding of the DFSG is wrong. Well, I mean, obviously we can all shout at each other on the mailing lists until the person we think is wrong gives up and quits, too, but that's not exactly a constitutional power. This is why having an interventionist secretary that decides a priori that certain interpretations are incompatible with the DFSG is so problematic and the cause of so much outrage on the mailing lists - because regardless of whether it's done with malice (which I don't believe it is), the effect is that the secretary assumes the power to interpret the foundation documents and his personal interpretation of the DFSG suddenly become paramount. You (appear to) happen to agree with Manoj's understanding of the implications of the DFSG for the lenny release. That's fine; I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong to think that. But that doesn't make it ok for you, or the secretary, to impose this interpretation on the project except *by way of* the GR process. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org [1] ... or the DAM by summarily expelling them from the project, I guess... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Thu, Dec 18 2008, Steve Langasek wrote: No other body for enforcement of the DFSG is defined in the constitution. It's up to individual developers to determine for themselves whether their actions are in keeping with the DFSG/SC, and with the promise they made when they became DDs to uphold those principles in their Debian work. No one else, with the exception of the project as a whole by way of GR[1], has the power to decree that a developer's understanding of the DFSG is wrong. This, then, should also apply for the developer who is serving as the secretary. Or you shpould amend your statement here, to say that all developers, with the exception of the secretary, interpret the DFSG in performing their duties. Well, I mean, obviously we can all shout at each other on the mailing lists until the person we think is wrong gives up and quits, too, but that's not exactly a constitutional power. This is why having an interventionist secretary that decides a priori that certain interpretations are incompatible with the DFSG is so problematic and the cause of so much outrage on the mailing lists - because regardless of whether it's done with malice (which I don't believe it is), the effect is that the secretary assumes the power to interpret the foundation documents and his personal interpretation of the DFSG suddenly become paramount. You (appear to) happen to agree with Manoj's understanding of the implications of the DFSG for the lenny release. That's fine; I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong to think that. But that doesn't make it ok for you, or the secretary, to impose this interpretation on the project except *by way of* the GR process. The job of the secretary is to figure out the ballot, and to figure out which options fall afoul of the 3:1 mojority requirement as decreed by the constitution. As you so persuasively argue, the only person who can interpret the DFSG for the developer who is performing as a secretary is the developer themselves -- or the developers via a GR. Seems like every single vote that touches things related to the SC will force the secretary to be interventionist -- since intervening is their job. [1] ... or the DAM by summarily expelling them from the project, I guess... Yes, I found that option rather elegant. Much faster than having to wait until the secretaries term ran out. manoj -- In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset. Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Fri, Dec 19 2008, Steve Langasek wrote: On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 02:46:35PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: * Why does releasing despite DFSG violations require a 3:1 majority now when it didn't for etch? It's the same secretary in both cases. What changed? I didn't find any of the explanations offered for this very satisfying. The proposal we used before is choice 5 in the current ballot, and that does indeed have a 1:1 majority like we did before. The devil lies in the details (and I have explained the details before too) -- which is that we state that the fiormware blob be released under a DFSG free licence. This means we explictly conform to the DFSG, While I accept that this was your understanding as a seconder of the etch GR and proposer of choice 5 on the current GR, this was definitely *not* how I understood the etch GR, either as a seconder or as RM for etch, because the language quite distinctly refers to DFSG-compliance of the license and not of the software. I find this actually hard to understand. Most licenses themselves seem to not actually fall under the DFSG (I do not think you may modify them while still distributing them and the attached Work, and distributing modified versions of the entity we are considering to be DFSG free This language was no accident, it was deliberately crafted to *not* say that firmware had to comply with DFSG#4's requirements for source inclusion. I'm sorry if you understood otherwise when setting the supermajority requirements for that vote, or when seconding/voting, but we intentionally *did* release etch with firmware in main that wasn't DFSG-compliant, and http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007 was the justification for doing so. We certainly weren't pretending that binary microcode firmware was its own source! This was certainly not how I understood the proposal to be. I would deem that interpretation, and thus the release of Etch, to have been in violation of the contract we had with the free software community. So if that's not what you mean to say for lenny, I suggest that you propose different language than what you currently have for choice 5 on the ballot. I thank you for clarifying the interpretation of the proposal, and pointing me to the flaw in my wording of the proposal that allowed such ambiguity to exist. I do not think we released before with known violations. We released with things we strongly suspected as being violations; since we strongly suspect the blob was not the preferred form of modification, but we do not know for a fact. By your reasoning, http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007 was a useless no-op. The release team certainly didn't need to be told it was ok to ship binary firmware in main if we had a good-faith belief that the binary was the preferred form of modification. That sure isn't why I seconded it. I think that the ballot option was over riding the statement in the SC that says Debian shall be 100% free, and that what is free is determined by the DFSG. For the project to actually resolve to not comply with the foundation document, or do an end run around it, certainly should require a 3:1 option. I did not mean for option 5 to be considered a get-out-of-jail-free card to allow for DFSG violations in formware included in kernel image packages in main. At this juncture, I think I must withdraw that proposal for any future votes, or add language clarifying my intent (which is only to convey to the release team that due diligence on whether firmware actually complies with the accompanying license can be waived for Lenny, and taking firmware on faith is good enough) But i think we must instead clarify, as aj said in his email, what the social contract means. I tend to take contract at face value: a binding agreement, something we have undertaken to do. Some of the options in aj's mail make it sound more like a social non-binding statement of intent, which is not how I have interpreted it all along. Perhaps it would be better to clarify this (which I have been taking as a given); that would certainly help me decide whether or not I wish to remain with the project. I suspect that such a memorandum of understanding might affect other people as well. manoj -- I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the time I found out that MMs really DO melt in your hand. -- Peter Oakley Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Tue, 16 Dec 2008, Russ Allbery wrote: Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org writes: On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 04:27:22PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: This is where I have a strong disagreement with Manoj and apparently with you. I don't think there's any justification in the constitution for requiring a developer statement about the project's sense of the meaning of the SC and the DFSG to have a 3:1 majority, or to make a developer override to enforce that sense of the meaning. Both the override and the statement about the meaning of the documents should require 1:1. 3:1 should only be required when the documents are explicitly superseded or changed, not just for making a project statement about their interpretation. With the corollary, I think, that such 1:1 position statements are non-binding; you can compel developers to a particular course of action with a specific 1:1 vote, but you can't force developers to accept your *interpretation* of the foundation documents that led to the override, short of modifying the foundation document to include that interpretation. But such modifications definitely shouldn't happen without the express intent of the proposer. Yup, I agree with that. Not sure it's needed but I also share this opinion/interpretation of the constitution. I'm glad that I'm not alone here and that we might have some basis to avoid a constitutional crisis. How do we get back to a saner situation now ? Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Sun, Dec 14 2008, Pierre Habouzit wrote: On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 03:02:17AM +, Debian Project Secretary wrote: -- Choice 2: Allow Lenny to release with proprietary firmware [3:1] == == = = == === === = Why on earth does it needs [3:1] whereas it wasn't needed for: http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007 Asked and answered, it has to do with removing the wording about requiring the firmware to be under a dfsg free license. -- Choice 3: Allow Lenny to release with DFSG violations [3:1] == == = = == === == = Same question somehow applies here. You do not think asking to release with known violations of a foundation document needs a 3:1? Again, asked and answered. -- Choice 4: Empower the release team to decide about allowing DFSG violations [3:1] == == === === === == == = == Unless I'm mistaken this shouldn't be [3:1] as it's specifically allowed by the § about delegates in the constitution. Delegates shall take decision they see fit. What should be [3:1] is to dis-empower them from having such rights. Actuallu, nothing delegated to the delegates allows them to change the foundation docs. Or should the packager fo the constitution document, or the web team, under their daily tasks, just change the constitution as they see fit? And FWIW I still believe this vote is an horrible mix-up of really different things, is completely confusing, and I've no clue how to vote. I would be surprised other people don't think the same. E.g. How can I decide 2 _and_ 4 ? Does the rule change ? Does any resolution that wins overs Further Discussion will be validated ? Because unless I'm mistaken, 2 doesn't imply 4, so if 2 wins, 4 is invalidated. No one seems to have seen it desirable to put a 2 4 option on the ballotl; despite the months we took to discuss this. The web page with the options was also up for several weeks, and a draft ballot went up earlier. Seems liek there was plenty of time to change things, and add some of the power set options on to the ballot. If I had added options willy-nilly, you would have screamed again of abuse of power. manoj -- God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends. Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Manoj Srivastava wrote: On Sun, Dec 14 2008, Pierre Habouzit wrote: On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 03:02:17AM +, Debian Project Secretary wrote: And FWIW I still believe this vote is an horrible mix-up of really different things, is completely confusing, and I've no clue how to vote. I would be surprised other people don't think the same. E.g. How can I decide 2 _and_ 4 ? Does the rule change ? Does any resolution that wins overs Further Discussion will be validated ? Because unless I'm mistaken, 2 doesn't imply 4, so if 2 wins, 4 is invalidated. No one seems to have seen it desirable to put a 2 4 option on the ballotl; despite the months we took to discuss this. The web page with the options was also up for several weeks, and a draft ballot went up earlier. It's you who decided to put all the proposals on the same ballot. I don't think it's fair to request from people who disagree with that to invest time in proposing more options. It's you who decided to make it a mess, you could as an experienced vote taker have suggested quite some different things which could have made it cleaner instead IMHO. Seems liek there was plenty of time to change things, and add some of the power set options on to the ballot. If I had added options willy-nilly, you would have screamed again of abuse of power. Sure, though you could have followed the procedure or hinted people in an even saner direction IMHO. Cheers Luk -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
* Ean Schuessler (e...@brainfood.com) [081217 14:53]: - Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: With the corollary, I think, that such 1:1 position statements are non-binding; you can compel developers to a particular course of action with a specific 1:1 vote, but you can't force developers to accept your *interpretation* of the foundation documents that led to the override, short of modifying the foundation document to include that interpretation. But such modifications definitely shouldn't happen without the express intent of the proposer. Don't we need to take into consideration that the release managers' interpretation of the DFSG is the most binding one in the project? Not necessarily. If ftp-masters' interpretation would be more strict, they could remove software. Also, of course you are free to ask the DPL to replace the release team, and/or to run an GR with the same effect. However, AFAICS, we even don't have enough qualified candidates for that post when we ask for volunteers. Which does indicate to me that the amount of work to be done is more than the amount of power. If you want to change our release goals, that's ok. Please contact the release team at the known role account (though I cannot remember off-hand a mail to the effect from you). If you want to change the decision making process, that's fine either. Make a new proposal, and if you get enough supporters, than I (and I hope everybody) else accepts it (or leaves the project). However: Until a new decision making process is decided by the developers at large, the current one is the binding one. The consitution defines a way how decisions are made in Debian currently. According to the constitution, the decisions are done the way Steve explained. If you can't accept the current constitution including the way how decisions are made, and are unable to get the developers to agree on a new one (within the current rules, i.e. 3:1-majority), then I'm afraid your only way is to leave the project. (This part isn't meant personally at anyone, but - that's the way projects are governed.) Cheers, Andi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
- Steve Langasek vor...@debian.org wrote: With the corollary, I think, that such 1:1 position statements are non-binding; you can compel developers to a particular course of action with a specific 1:1 vote, but you can't force developers to accept your *interpretation* of the foundation documents that led to the override, short of modifying the foundation document to include that interpretation. But such modifications definitely shouldn't happen without the express intent of the proposer. Don't we need to take into consideration that the release managers' interpretation of the DFSG is the most binding one in the project? I understand that there is a motivation by the release manager's to insure that the release is both technologically stable and timely but shouldn't the release managers be equally concerned with the legal stability of the release? Putting on the corporate user hat, I would hope that running stable would give me the highest level of protection against inadvertently running software that is violating its license. A serious license problem could potentially be every bit as disruptive and expensive to our users as a technical problem. I think this factor is really what the discussion is about and why release continues to be a sticking point year after year. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com e...@brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Mon, Dec 15 2008, Russ Allbery wrote: Thomas Weber thomas.weber.m...@gmail.com writes: Am Montag, den 15.12.2008, 10:06 + schrieb Steve McIntyre: I've been talking with Manoj already, in private to try and avoid flaming. I specifically asked him to delay this vote until the numerous problems with it were fixed, and it was started anyway. I'm *really* not happy with that, and I'm following through now. Uh, I don't quite get this: you shortened the discussion period, but at the same time asked the secretary to delay the vote? Where did Steve shorten the discussion period? He did so for the *other* vote, but I haven't seen a thread where he did for this one. (I may have just missed it.) I mis remembered. Steve shortened the discussion period for this vote, and the discussion and voting period for the _other_ vote, but I missed that the vote period for the gr_lenny vote was not shortened. I'll send out a new CFV. Sorry about that. manoj -- Happiness adds and multiplies as we divide it with others. Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
On Sun, Dec 14 2008, Loïc Minier wrote: This ballot is nonsense: a) I want to decide on requirements of source of firmwares AND allow lenny to release with DFSG violations AND proprietary firmware AND empower the release team to release with DFSG violations The way that we achive such combinations using condorcet is to propose such combinations as options intheir own right; and then have people vote on the combination option along with simple options. There was no such proposal during the discussion period. manoj -- Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. Kin Hubbard, Abe Martin's Sayings Manoj Srivastava sriva...@debian.org http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/ 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
