Re: Another proposal.
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 12:34:11AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> Still, I question the utility of a quorum requriment at all in a project
> of Debian's size. There have been irregularities in our application of
> the Constitution in the past (e.g., with Project Leaders' terms of
> office), but these weren't terribly problematic. Debian has never
> kicked out a developer on procedural grounds, and unlike a government we
> have no power to really punish people for breaking our "laws".
>
> Therefore in my opinion, quorum requirements in particular are a
> solution in search of a problem. Half a dozen people working
> complicitly with a Project Secretary to hold some sort of rigged vote
> that doesn't reflect the will of the Project simply aren't going to be
> taken seriously.
On the other hand, we've never had an official vote which was even close
to failing to meet our quorum requirement.
You're saying, in essence, that since we've never had a problem getting
enough people involved in the vote that we shouldn't have any kind
of minimal requirements for getting people involved. Yes, you could
describe quorum in this context as a solution looking for a problem.
Or, you could say that it's a way of formalizing existing practice.
> I suspect the same is true of supermajority requirements.
Likewise, we've never had an official vote where the winning option would
have failed to satisfy a 3:1 supermajority requirement. In these votes,
the winning option hasn't needed to satisfy that kind of requirement,
but even if they had it wouldn't have been a problem.
--
Raul
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