For those lacking in time to read all of this, here's my second! Hell, I'll even sign it while we're all proposing things. On Wed, Oct 11, 2000 at 06:50:10AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > Maybe we should use this as a chance to actually decide this issue in > some sort of rational way. Agreed. Neither John's proposal nor your amendment quite addressed my personal preference for solving this debacle. In the interest of seeing this resolved according to some reasonable standard which follows the constitution's lead rather than trying to make an end-run around it, I will simply offer my personal opinion that given the opportunity I'd like to see the language forcing Debian to maintain non-free removed from the social contract. At that point, Debian would be free to maintain the non-free archive without social contract bounds on how much or how long. I have no doubt in my mind that non-free wouldn't be going away anytime soon, though where its structure may change a bit. But I digress, and would prefer not to start yet another flamewar over this opinion now. > First, we might need a new secretary. At the very least we seem likely > to have to go through a few votes to clean this matter up, and that'll > need some continued attention. I'm not volunteering. Darren, could you > please speak up if you don't have time to handle all this to everyone's > satisfaction or if you need some assistance crafting up and issuing > ballots or similar? (I imagine one of John Goerzen, Joseph Carter or > Branden Robinson might be willing and able to help here; they all seem > to have an interest in ensuring this is handled properly) This because of the precedents involved. I lack time or patience to be project secretary - although the flagrant abuses of power both possible and nearly unstoppable within our constitutional framework for the position of secretary could be amusing for all of about three hours. > Second, we need to modify the constitution to clearly let the social > contract be modified. A single ballot to choose whether it should be > by simple majority or supermajority, and to accept the change (under > A.3.3) would probably be the best way of handling this. I would argue that it's pretty clearly modifyable now. Clearly, and unfortunately too easily. Some sort of ratio above simple majority, be it 2:1 or yes, maybe even 3:1, seems appropriate. I'd rather it be difficult to modify the social contract and DFSG than it be too easy. This seems to be what I see calls for most often. > Third, we need to decide the non-free issue. A single ballot to say "YES" > we want to remove it or "NO" we want to keep it is probably best here. > > YMMV. Whatever. Can we get on with it though? YES, PLEASE! Let's get on with it - but let's get on with doing it the right way. -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> GnuPG key 1024D/DCF9DAB3 Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org/) 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC The QuakeForge Project (http://quakeforge.net/) 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3 <Espy> you are baked <knghtbrd> Espy: only half so
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