On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 10:16:27AM -0500, Buddha Buck wrote: > Unlike Branden, I would like some issues to be hard to change -- things > like the Social Contract and the DFSG. I think it's one of Debian's > strenghts that we take a principled stand, and have not waivered on > those principles (at least, in principle) since we stuck our necks out > and said "this is what we believe". Debian has, by example, said "It's > not good enough to be best, it's important to do the right thing, as > well". I feel the fact that the Open Source Definition has changed to > be a weakness of the OSD, compared to the DFSG. The Social Contract is > older still, and it, too, has been steadfast. It should be hard to > change, and it's important that we don't forget why we are doing what we > are doing. I don't want it to be as easy to change these things as it > is to pass a technical policy statement. As such, I do not believe it > is right to drop the supermajority requirement as stated in option [1]. > > (You might be able to tell from the above political rant that I align > myself closer to the goals and purpose of the FSF than the OSI). Please don't associate my preference for [1] with: * a feeling that Debian shouldn't take a principled stand * a feeling that Debian should be wavering in its principles for "practical" reasons * a feeling that Debian shouldn't stick its neck out in defense of its beliefs * a feeling that Debian should subordinate what's "right" to what's "best" * a feeling that OSI has better goals and purposes than the FSF None of the above are true of me, and yet I still feel that a supermajority requirement may be a bad thing, and that we should try doing without it for a while to see if it really results in any terrible disasters that will have to be reverted. It is illogical to associate supermajority requirements with the inverse of any of the above bulleted points. You should read the paper that John Robinson provided a reference to. -- G. Branden Robinson | The errors of great men are Debian GNU/Linux | venerable because they are more branden@debian.org | fruitful than the truths of little http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | men. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Attachment:
pgp79TCDAvhAC.pgp
Description: PGP signature