On Mon, Jun 28, 1999 at 09:35:51PM +0100, Philip Hands wrote: > [ I'm cross-posting this, because it seems that people managed to miss what is > going on what with messages being spread across debian-vote, and > debian-publicity. Please follow up to -publicity] [I did not follow up to -publicity because I think it's a -vote issue. I did leave -publicity in because it was requested that the messages go there] >From talking to people over the weekend at the UKUUG Linux conference, I get > the impression that there is a consensus that the plain swirl is nicer that > the with-bottle-swirl, and that if we must have two logos, then it would be > better to have the plain-swirl in the widest possible use (because it's nicer). > > If that's true, then we should be discussing it, rather than going to a vote > with practically no discussion whatsoever. Decision making in Debian has > always previously been based on consensus, even if the consensus was simply > ``We should vote on it''. > > In this case, I seen no evidence that there was a consensus for a vote, so I'm > not convinced that there will be any validity to the result. The constitution, unfortunatly, doesn't work like this. According the the constitution, a vote will happen any time 6 developers want an issue voted on (1 Proposer and 5 sponsors). I'm not trying to argue right or wrong.. just is and if that's not the way it should be done, the constitution must be changed not just a consensus opinion that we should do the voting differently. > > >From reading the archives again, it seems that events happened like this: > > Branden mentioned the vote idea (not sure which list). The first time I saw anyting was to -devel and it was a formal proposal (http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9906/msg00427.html) > I objected because (IIRC) it was too specific, and should allow for > other possibilities (such as alternatives that Raul could come up with). Objections of a developer does not stop a vote... only the lack of sponsors or the withdrawl of the original proposal. > Branden resubmitted his unchanged proposal to debian-vote and > debian-publicity He did this in response to an open message I left stating that I can miss official stuff posted to -devel and that proposals should be sent to either -vote or secretary@d.o. > A bunch of people seconded it. > > Later, on -publicity, Adam Di Carlo said that we shouldn't be voting on > this in the first place. > > Raul followed up by saying that he agreed that discussions should continue > on -publicily, for a final decision, and that he'd come up with some more > versions of the logo. > > Witchert said that in that case, he was against the logo swap. > > Then nothing more was said, as far as I can see. But the proposal was never withdran, nor were any of the seconds. Then the proposer (after teh required time) called for a vote on the issue... > > In the old days, that would have been the end of it, until we heard back form > Raul, but now we get automatically bulldozered into a vote, despite the fact > that there seems to be no consensus that we should even have a vote. The constitution was designed to formalize a lot of stuff that was done informally in the old days. With 500+ developers, it's hard to be a close group of intimate people so Ian and a bunch of others worked on a constitution to govern decisions. > > The trouble is, that I think the majority of the people voting for ``Swap'' > are actually voting for ``Use the swirl, and forget the bottle'', which is > something different. Very possible :( I *hope* people are informed voters... > I can see this sort of thing happening again --- we need to stop people > proposing votes before there has been a chance to build a consensus (without a > vote). Otherwise the minority of people who can be bothered to vote, will be > able to push through all sorts of drivel. How? There is no restriction for proposing votes except that that they must be a developer. The only restrictions to actually holding the vote is time (1-3 weeks, depending on the DPL) and enough sponsors (5). > Do the right thing, and vote ``Further Discussion'' now! And for those of you who want to, you can change your vote by "re voting" -- Please cc all mailing list replies to me, also. ========================================================================= * http://benham.net/index.html <gecko@benham.net> <>< * * -------------------- * -----------------------------------------------* * Debian Developer, Debian Project Secretary, Debian Webmaster * * <gecko@debian.org> <secretary@debian.org> <lintian-maint@debian.org> * * <webmaster@debian.org> <gecko@fortunet.com> <webmaster@spi-inc.org> * =========================================================================
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