Re: OT: Consensus
Ted,
please, take this somewhere else. In the past days this debate has filled
up my mailbox - if I wanted such a debate I would have turned on the TV or
done something similar. I subscribed to this list for debian security
reasons, not to read lamentations and political views. pls, pls, pls, no
more. I suspect it took you some time to write what you wrote below and I
suspect that your time could be used more productively.
With respect,
Ognen
On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, Ted Parvu wrote:
> 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/
>
> -------
>
> "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."
>
> --------
>
>
> 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
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> WAR IS PEACE
> FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
> IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-security-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: