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Re: PROPOSED: [CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT] Alternate disambiguation of 4.1.5



On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 03:00:29AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:

I second the enclosed proposal.

> ======================================================================
>  4. The Developers by way of General Resolution or election
>  
>    4.1. Powers
>    
>     Together, the Developers may:
>      1. Appoint or recall the Project Leader.
>      2. Amend this constitution, provided they agree with a 3:1 majority.
>      3. Override any decision by the Project Leader or a Delegate.
>      4. Override any decision by the Technical Committee, provided they
>         agree with a 2:1 majority.
> -    5. Issue nontechnical policy documents and statements.
> -       These include documents describing the goals of the project, its
> -       relationship with other free software entities, and nontechnical
> -       policies such as the free software licence terms that Debian
> -       software must meet.
> -       They may also include position statements about issues of the day.
> +    5. Issue, modify and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and statements.
> +       These include documents describing the goals of the project, its
> +       relationship with other free software entities, and nontechnical
> +       policies such as the free software licence terms that Debian
> +       software must meet.
> +       They may also include position statements about issues of the day.
> +   5.1 A special clause applies to the documents labelled as
> +       "Foundation Documents". These documents are those 
> +       that are deemed to be critical to the core of the project,
> +       they tend to define what the project is, and lay the
> +       foundations of its structure. The developers may
> +       modify a foundation document provided they agree with a 3:1
> +       majority. 
> 
> -- +   5.2 Initially, the list of foundation Documents consists
> +       of this document, The Debian Constitution, as well as the
> +       documents known as the Debian GNU/Linux Social Contract and the 
> +       Debian Free Software Guidelines. The list of the documents
> +       that are deemed to be "Foundation Documents" may be changed
> +       by the developers provided they agree with a 3:1 majority. 
>      6. Together with the Project Leader and SPI, make decisions about
>         property held in trust for purposes related to Debian. (See
>         s.9.1.)
> ======================================================================   
>  Rationale: The clause being modified has been seen recently to be quite
>  ambiguous. Since the original wording appeared to be amenable to two
>  wildly different interpretations, this change adds clarifying language to
>  the constitution about _changing_ or withdrawing nontechnical documents.
>  Additionally, this also provides for the core, or Foundation, documents of
>  the project the same protection against hasty changes that the
>  constitution itself enjoys.
> ====================================================================== 

-- 
Mark Brown  mailto:broonie@tardis.ed.ac.uk   (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
            http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFS        http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/

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