Bug#587279: debian-policy: section 2.2.1 needs some tweaking
Michael Gilbert <michael.s.gilbert@gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 1:43 AM, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> I think you're in the "rough" of "rough consensus."
> It takes some moxie to put a dent into the status quo. If that's rough,
> so be it. I try my best to be kind and constructive though. Really
> I've tried to avoid anything potentially confrontational for a long long
> time now.
Ack, sorry. That's a term from the IETF that I think is too easy to
misinterpret out of context. I didn't mean to say that you were being
rough or confrontational to anyone.
The intent of the phrase is to capture the fact that consensus-based
decision-making doesn't mean that everyone agrees. Consensus isn't
unanimity, particularly "rough consensus," which is the metric that the
IETF uses formally and that Debian uses in practice. When someone
disagrees with the consensus but still seems clearly outnumbered and
doesn't succeed in persauding others that there is not consensus, they're
said to be in the "rough" of the "rough consensus."
Think the "rough" of a golf course, not "rough" as in confrontational or
aggressive.
> Well, there was the recent -devel thread on essentially the same
> topic: something like "holes in our software fortress".
Which was about yet a third separate topic, namely cryptographic
verification of executable code retrieved from the network, and is
unrelated to whether or not that code is non-free.
> I think Ben's rewording would be good.
I'm also okay with Ben's rewording, and am inclined to apply it for the
next Policy release. If anyone disagrees, speak up.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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