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Re: Supermajority requirements and historical context [Was, Re: First call for votes for the Lenny release GR]



On Sat Dec 20 17:51, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 12:48:43PM +0200, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
> > In my eyes, this argument applies to any situation where a supermajority
> > might be formally required, and in my opinion the corollary is that
> > supermajorities are a bad idea in general.
> 
> > Do you agree with that corollary?  If not, why not?
> 
> Yes, I agree that supermajority requirements are a bad idea in general.

Which is a perfectly reasonable attitude to have and I wouldn't be
surprised if a vote to remove them from our constitution passed (I might
even second or vote for it), but at the moment we _do_ have
supermajority requirements and we can't just ignore them because we
don't like them.

> This argument does IMHO not apply to making decisions about what Debian is
> going to do.  We shouldn't take decisions to set aside the DFSG lightly, but
> the *process* for arriving at a decision should be lightweight.  By that
> standard, the past two months have been a failure on multiple levels.

I think this all just goes to show that while _I_ don't think the
constitution is ambiguous on this point and _you_ don't think it's
ambiguous on this point, we both think it means different things, so it
clearly _is_ ambiguous and this is a bad thing. I think we need to
rewrite it to be clear and pick one position. I'm not even that bothered
which one, but I will continue arguing for what I think our foundation
documents mean (even if the vote goes against what I would prefer, if
the majority says that).

Matt

-- 
Matthew Johnson

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