Re: Draft GR for permitting private discussion
On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 01:18:27PM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 10:31:15AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> >> > The current wording, read literally, means that if I happened to run into
> >> > Steve Langasek, say, at a social occasion, I am not permitted to mention
> >> > network-manager and GNOME to him, because that conversation isn't public
> >> > and that's an issue currently before the technical committee.
> >> I would agree that if yours here is the common interpretation of the
> >> current wording of the Constitution, then we have a problem. (It is not
> >> *my* reading, but that's meaningless.) I don't think that anyone would
> >> want to inhibit private discussions to happen at all. But I do think
> >> people would expect them to be reported ex-post.
> > I have no problem interpreting "are made public" to mean that a
> > summary is send to the list.
> Since I've been the "loudest" on this, I also fully agree with this
> perspective. I don't think matters need to be so black and white that
> off-list discussions would be disallowed.
> Even a summary as simple as "Hey, ____, ____, and I briefly discussed
> ____ matter at _____ forum, but we didn't really come to any new ideas
> or conclusions," would often be enough to satisfy our openness ideals.
> Although more substantive summaries should be produced for
> discussions that come to real conclusions.
I don't think that's a reasonable requirement at all. Why would you not
just assume that whenever members of the TC meet, they've spoken about
outstanding issues, instead of expecting TC members to engage in this kind
of busywork? It's not like we're talking about secret ballots here, and on
the other hand it's not like any solution is going to give perfect knowledge
of the members' thought processes! So what's the point of demanding
documentation every time we talk, when that won't materially alter the
project's visibility into the process?
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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