Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR
Andreas Barth <aba@not.so.argh.org> writes:
> * Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) [081217 01:11]:
>> 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 explicitly superseded or changed, not just for making a project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.
> I don't think that overriding can be done with 1:1-majority, but has the
> same requirements as changing. With the rest I however agree.
Overriding the decision of a developer (which is what I was referring to)
does not have any supermajority requirement. Constitution 4.1.3.
The constitution does not explicitly provide any mechanism to override a
foundation document (which I think may have been what you thought I was
referring to), only issue, supersede, and withdraw them. The assumption
underlying previous votes was presumably that overriding a foundation
document was supersession under the definition:
1) (a) to cause to be set aside
Personally, I think that's a bit of a stretch. The rules lawyer in me
would have preferred to see overrides framed in the form of an actual
supersession in the definition:
2) to take the place, room, or position of
3) to displace in favor of another SUPPLANT
and include new text which included whatever rule was being made, even if
that new text was self-limiting and temporary. But this is probably just
me being excessively formalist.
(I'm probably making it painfully obvious to everyone on debian-vote why I
keep ending up working on standards documents, even though I think writing
code is more fun.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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