Re: piece of mind (Re: Moderated posts?)
Jerry Stuckle <jstuckle@attglobal.net> writes:
> On 10/13/2014 7:57 PM, lee wrote:
>> Martin Read <zen75502@zen.co.uk> writes:
>>
>>> On 12/10/14 23:04, lee wrote:
>>>> Bas Wijnen <wijnen@debian.org> writes:
>>>>> Because for a GR, a member of Debian has to request it and it needs to
>>>>> be seconded by at least 5 other members (constitution 4.2.1, 4.2.7).
>>>>> This has not happened.
>>>>
>>>> I know, and I'm suggesting to omit this requirement.
>>>
>>> Technically, there *is* a way for a GR to be brought forward for
>>> discussion and voting without having six DDs supporting it: the
>>> Project Leader can personally propose it. The Project Leader has not
>>> done so, and the Debian Constitution does not place any obligation on
>>> the holder of the post of Project Leader to propose any particular
>>> General Resolution.
>>>
>>> Any change to these constitutional arrangements would require the
>>> Debian Constitution to be amended, which (per the Constitution)
>>> requires a General Resolution validly proposed under the existing
>>> arrangements and then passed by a 3:1 supermajority in the ensuing
>>> vote.
>>>
>>> I would argue in any event that it's probably inappropriate for the
>>> Project Leader to propose a General Resolution which has already been
>>> proposed by a DD and failed to receive the required number of
>>> sponsors.
>>
>> This sounds like a very bad situation to me in which Debian has gotten
>> stuck. It's a good reason to re-consider the rules and to change them
>> so that getting stuck with an issue these rules are not adequate to deal
>> with hopefully doesn't come up so easily again. It's also a good reason
>> to let the rules be rules and to do what it is right instead --- no harm
>> would come from having a GR.
>>
>
> Actually, I have to agree with Martin on this. Although I don't like
> systemd, I also think it would be inappropriate for the Project Leader
> to propose a GR if it has already failed to get enough votes. Now if a
> DD wishes to propose it again, that would be more appropriate.
"Appropriate" in which sense?
>>>> Then they shouldn't say in their social contract that the users and
>>>> their needs are the priority.
>>>
>>> It is precisely *because* decisions in Debian are not made by the
>>> users-at-large, but only by the Debian developers, that the social
>>> contract by which the developers are expected to abide when working on
>>> the Debian project must explicitly state that the interests and needs
>>> of the users are important.
>>
>> The contract doesn't claim that the interests and needs of the users are
>> important. It says:
>>
>>
>> "We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software
>> community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We
>> will support the needs of our users for operation in many different
>> kinds of computing environments [...]"[1]
>>
>>
>> It is irrelevant whether the needs or interests of the users are
>> important. The contract merely claims that the interests of the users
>> are the first priority. That's a pretty strong statement, actually.
>>
>> Do you feel more like that what the contract says is actually true or
>> more like that it is not? If the contract was true, then how could
>> Debian let itself get stuck in the bad situation as decribed above?
>>
>
> Obviously the DDs think they are doing the right thing. I happen to
> disagree with them, but I don't think this invalidates the social contract.
Do you think that the DDs thinking that they are doing the right thing
automatically makes them guided by the needs of the users?
I would like to see some evidence that the DDs are guided by the needs
of the users. If this statement about being guided by the needs of the
users is solely in the social contract to remind DDs
>>> that the interests and needs of the users are important
then I'd suggest to clarify things and to perhaps change this statement
so that it says what Martin(?) says that it says, if it actually is
supposed to mean what he says it does.
>> [1]: https://www.debian.org/social_contract
>>
>>
>>> This, of course, leads us to two interesting points:
>>> 1) the Debian Developers are themselves users of Debian
>>
>> Then they should have no more or less power to make decisions than users
>> have. As long as they have more power to make decisions than users
>> have, the interests of the users are not the first priority of the
>> developers.
>>
>
> I disagree. I think they are doing the work and should have the power.
Then they aren't really users. Users don't have power and are either
doing the work or not.
> And even if as you said - how are you going to get all of the users in
> the world (or even 1% of them) to understand and make an intelligent
> choice on any situation.
I don't have a solution for this problem.
>>> 2) the Debian user community is not a monolithic entity whose
>>> constituent parts have uniform and identical interests and needs
>>
>> Isn't that another good reason to not let a (small) part of the users
>> have more power than another (larger) part?
>>
>
> It is an even better reason to have people who are intimately involved
> in the code and know more than most users have more power.
Is this so because the small number of people knows better what a great
diversity of other people you say nobody can even know about need than
those other people themselves? And they know this simply because they
are more or less involved with some source code?
Somehow, that doesn't make sense to me.
I could understand it if you were saying that the DDs --- or the source
code they are so intimately involved with --- define what the users
shall need. That wouldn't be what the social contract says, though.
Wouldn't have DDs to be intimately involved with users rather than
source code to be able to know what the users need?
Perhaps the social contract should be changed to "Users are
irrelevant.". By your logic, as long as the DDs would think that they'd
be doing the right thing to change it in this way, it would be what
the users need.
--
Again we must be afraid of speaking of daemons for fear that daemons
might swallow us. Finally, this fear has become reasonable.
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