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Re: supermajority options



On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 05:54:30PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> [1] The simplest: discard supermajority entirely.  Nothing special is
> required to override "important decisions".  This has some elegantly
> simple mathematical properties but I don't know of any other argument
> for it.

I support this.  I'd rather see whether or not we screw up in the
absence of supermajority requirements instead of just assuming that we
will.

In my opinion, if Debian's developers are so militantly, determinedly
"wrong" about something that they force it to a vote and win a majority
of the votes cast, then hope is lost for the "old guard" anyway, and
relying upon a technical or procedural mechanism to serve as an escape
clause will likely just delay the inevitable and promote acrimony.  The
face of the Project has changed while they weren't looking.

Essentially, I have confidence in the moral suasion of veteran
developers and the Project Leader.  If my confidence is unfounded, I'd
rather learn that through experience instead of letting myself be
spooked by prophecies of disaster, and never putting the theory to the
test.  I question the applicability of "tyranny of the majority"
platitudes to an all-volunteer organization with zero political power.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |       The software said it required
Debian GNU/Linux                   |       Windows 3.1 or better, so I
branden@debian.org                 |       installed Linux.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

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