On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 11:57:04PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > Umm, by this logic shouldn't Option 2 have won in the > disambiguation vote, rather than coming in last? Option 2, as Ian > Jackson pointed out, was the least disruptive of the lot; but the > voting actually went like so: > > Option 1 defeats Option 2 by 95 > Option 1 defeats Option 3 by 99 > Option 1 defeats Option 4 by 162 > Option 3 defeats Option 2 by 54 > Option 2 defeats Option 4 by 104 > Option 3 defeats Option 4 by 90 I think that's a hasty conclusion. Let's recall how much time passed between the first big flamewar on this subject and the time of the actual vote. I think at least three factors were at work in making Proposal A seem like the "safe, conservative" option. As I recall, the previous Project Secretary made an outlanding ruling, interpreting the Constitution to mean that the Social Contract and DFSG couldn't be amended *at all*. Secondly, Ian Jackson, author of the Constitution, took literally years to clarify the point, only stepping forward to set the record straight days before the close of voting. If he is disappointed with the outcome, he has only himself to blame. Students of history will know that revisionism, if left unchallenged, doesn't take long to become orthodoxy. Finally, you, as proponent of Proposal A, have had a good long time to spread the idea that it is the True and Right way to interpret the Constitution, and have repeatedly raised the specter of half the developers plus one simultaneously losing their minds and changing the direction of the project. This made it sound like the "safe bet", which undermines your objection to my thesis. Over the years I have attempted to counter this with the observation that if half the developers adopt a fundamental shift their attitudes towards the goals of the Debian Project, we'll know it long before they get around to proposing to amend the Social Contract -- the fabric of the project will have fundamentally changed. In my view, the Social Contract needs to *reflect* who we are, not *tell us* who we are. But your memes won, and mine lost. I suppose congratulations are in order. :) > Of course, this still falls in the category of the whole > project is out to get Branden ;-). I realize you're joking here, but since your joke is reminiscent of spiteful rhetoric I've heard uttered in earnest on occasion, I'll rebut it. :) I could have fought a lot harder against your proposal when it actually came up through the voting process properly. I didn't, because I was tired of the issue, and valued a sane and reasonably-worded amendment more than I valued winning the meme war. That's why I proposed many editorial amendments to your proposal so that it would be better-formed. As it turns out, you accepted most or all of them. If I felt it were pure poison, I wouldn't have done so. (Those who are fond of thinking of me as strident and inflexible may want to take a moment now to bulk erase their short-term memories so that they forget that inconvenient observation.) Anyway, to get back to the point, I think the 4.1.5 Disambiguation vote *was* support for my "conservative" electorate theory, but I disagree with you as to which option would have been regarded as "conservative" by "conservative" people. The vote results are public; we could always *ask* people why they voted as they did... -- G. Branden Robinson | Life is what happens to you while Debian GNU/Linux | you're busy making other plans. branden@debian.org | -- John Lennon http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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