Re: Conflict of interest in Debian
On 17/10/14 23:06, Henning Follmann wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 02:08:47PM -0400, Rob Owens wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Marty" <martyb@ix.netcom.com>
>>>
>>> It seems like free software employment and market share come
>>> with increasing risk to objectivity and technical quality. It's
>>> my main concern as a Debian user, as I consider recent trends.
>>>
>>> I hope that Debian members consider an amendment to restrict
>>> voting rights for members who have a financial interest in Debian
>>> or in any project used by Debian, to promote and protect the
>>> public interest.
>>
>> Conflicts of interest are not just financial. Even an unpaid
>> developer should probably not be voting as a technical committee
>> member on whether to make his project the Debian default. He could
>> vote for his project because of the glory that comes with being the
>> Debian default. Or maybe he truly believes it is the best. But he
>> knows his project better than any of the alternatives. He is
>> invested in it. He should be the expert petitioning the
>> decision-makers, but he should not be one of the decision-makers.
>>
>> I really think this concept is obvious and was really surprised
>> that Debian allowed a vote for default init system to occur in a
>> technical committee whose members have vested interests in one init
>> system or another.
>>
>> Avoiding perceived conflict of interest is just as important as
>> avoiding actual conflict of interest, because it undermines
>> confidence in the leadership. Most conflict-of-interest
>> regulations that I know of (USA-based) reflect this. (But let's
>> not start citing examples of government officials who have violated
>> these principles -- we all know there are plenty).
>>
>> Anyway, regardless of how impartial the tech committee members are
>> believed to be, the upstart guys and the systemd guys probably
>> should not have participated in the vote for default init system.
>>
>>
>> -Rob
>>
>>
>>
>
> There was no conflict of interest. Every voter has some interests and
> the outcome of a vote determines the common interest. But there is no
> conflict of interest during a vote.
As succinctly put here (have you read this Marty?):-
https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/02/msg00390.html
> A conflict happens when somebody is entrusted by a group to guard a
> common good and he/she has her/himself interests in that good.
>
> This thread is about the inability to accept a outcome of a
> democratic process. Now they claim to own "the right debian" way and
> to protect that some "un-debian" persons have to be stopped. I have
> seen that before...
??
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/10/msg00308.html
>
> -H
>
Kind regards
--
"Passion is a knife without morality" ~ apropos of little
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