GFDL position statement ballot invalid
On Sat, 2006-02-25 at 17:21 -0600, Debian Project Secretary wrote:
> The following ballot is for voting on a General Resolution to address
> the Debian project's position on the GNU Free Documentation License.
> The vote is being conducted in accordance with the policy delineated
> in Section A, Standard Resolution Procedure, of the Debian
> Constitution.
Part of the description of choice 3 is
Majority Requirement
Amendment B requires a 3:1 majority, since it require
modifications to the Social contract, or the DFSG, both
foundation documents.
This makes no sense because the text of the modifications is not given.
How can it be said that an amendment is modifying either document if
there is no text included to accomplish that? If this option is
adopted, what will the text of the change be? Note that this speaks of
modification to the Social Contract OR the DFSG. Which one is it? If
the Secretary cannot specify that, how can it be said that there is any
modification at all?
If the Secretary's creative interpretation is allowed to stand, the
proper description of what is happening can only be that this proposal
adds a new foundation document.
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ones withdrawn by amending the list of Foundation Documents in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.
So the position is
either
the ballot is incoherent and invalid because it claims that this
proposal is modifying a foundation document while not specifying
how it is doing so or the actual text of the change;
or
the requirement of a supermajority for choice 3 is invalid.
--
Oliver Elphick olly@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
GPG: 1024D/A54310EA 92C8 39E7 280E 3631 3F0E 1EC0 5664 7A2F A543 10EA
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