OT: Consensus
Hello Debian Community!
I had hoped to hear from you, and hear from us we have. I look forward
to hearing from more of you around our world. I would like to address
some of the issues about this thread being off topic.
The debian-security list is an open, unmoderated, list created with the
intent of serving as a platform for discussion of security issues to the
greater Debian community, that is you and I folks. For those of you who
keep screaming off topic there is no great moderator in the sky to call
upon to zap this thread. To the naysayers, remember no ONE person
speaks for the Debian community. If this thread were not of interest to
the community, we would let it die.
What is so wonderful about the Open Source movement in general and the
Debian community in particular, is that no one person speaks for the
community. Debian is not ruled by a hierarchy, but rather a heterarchy.
A true heterarchy is a self organizing system where no one member has
any more authority than the next. There are no leaders.
There are various levels of heterarchy in existence in the Open Source
movement. For example Linus wields a fair amount of authority over what
does and what does not go into the kernel. While the Debian community
is considerably more "open". A heterarchal system can also be used on a
macroscopic scale while allowing the subsystems that comprise the
macroscopic system to organize in a manner of their own choosing.
The Internet is an example of a macroscopic system such as this. At the
macro level the Internet is more or less a heterarchy, yet each
individual subsystem in the Internet is free to organize as it wishes.
There are certain rules that each subsystem needs to play by in order to
be a part of the Internet but these rules are organized, created, and
abandoned by the individual members that comprise the greater system.
So what does any of this have to do with the world's new war and more
importantly with debian security? Allow me to posit that wars are a
product of hierarchal systems. War is seldom, if ever, in the best
interests of the people who die and are mutilated in them. Wars are
almost always in the interests of those at the top of the hierarchy at
the expense of those at the base of the pyramid. Those leaders may use
various means to convince the masses that war is in their best interest
but since they almost never are, these means are almost always
deceptions.
Fine, but why the Debian community? What other world wide community of
system level thinkers who have been practicing government, or if you
like non-government, by consensus do you know of? There probably are
others but this is the only one of which I am a member. How many
communities do you know of that can grasp what I am saying in a few
short paragraphs? We in the Open Source community have been practicing,
to great success, self organization by consensus.
If we the people are ever going to live in a world of peace, and the
costs of war are and will continue to become increasingly devastating,
we must rid ourselves of our so called leaders. Their interests are
simply not ours. The members of the Debian community have been
simultaneously the benefactors and beneficiaries of a heterarchal
system. But can it work in the real world?
It can and has. The following is from this fascinating treatise
entitled "The Six Nations: Oldest Living Participatory Democracy on
Earth".
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/
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"The people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroquois
Confederacy, call themselves the Hau de no sau nee (ho dee noe sho nee)
or People of the Longhouse. Located in the northeastern region of North
America, originally the Six Nations was five and included the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The sixth nation, the
Tuscaroras, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth
century. Together these peoples comprise the oldest living participatory
democracy on earth. Their story, and governance truly based on the
consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting
intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American
history. The original United States representative democracy, fashioned
by such central authors as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, drew
much inspiration from this confederacy of nations. In our present day,
we can benefit immensely, in our quest to establish anew a government
truly dedicated to all life's liberty and happiness much as has been
practiced by the Six Nations for over 800 hundred years."
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I would now like to demonstrate consensus in action. I have heard and
respect the voices of the community that cry, "off topic!". I ask that
you hear and respect the voices of the community who want to discuss
these issues. I propose that we label the subjects of these
non-traditional threads with prefix of "OT:". This will allow the
members of the community who do not wish to participate to easily filter
these conversations out. "OT" can stand for "off topic", "on topic",
"off traditional", or whatever the reader wishes it to mean.
I am not a leader. People will choose to do this or they will not.
Even if people adopt this process, if at some point in the future it
stops making sense, people will stop using it. It is that simple.
We will self organize based upon our self interests. Our levels of
consensus on any given issue will vary from agreement, to
non-participation, to active opposition. That is how it works. You are
always free to leave the community. If you decide you no longer like
Debian, then move to Red Hat or whatever.
I would like to close with a quote;
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Peace
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WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
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