On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 04:24:52PM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: > I'm not sure that we could make the logo a foundation document without > changing the constitution. Well, we definitely can't: changing the constitution is how foundation documents are added. > The logo doesn't represent any rules that > I'm aware of. I certainly don't see the relevance of this paragraph. Foundation documents aren't required to be "rules". They're not required to be anything more than a "document or statement regarded as critical to the Project's mission and purposes." We could, if we wanted, regarded a piece of complete propaganda that was full of lies and misleading truths to be critical to the project's success because it's the best or only way to get folks involved in Debian. > I'm not sure in what way you think that "critical to the Project's > mission and purposes" is not descriptive. It's descriptive, but it's not prescriptive: it doesn't tell us how we have to treat the document. Do we put it up on a web page for people to admire or hand it out as a pamphlet at conferences? Or do we use it to inspire ourselves, without taking it too literally? Or do we follow it to the letter as though it were part of the constitution? Or does it supersede the constitution in some sense? Or something else? > > I can't see a constitutional basis for requiring us to uphold the social > > contract in any particular fashion, so if you want to dismiss options > > because they're not compatible with a reading of the social contract, > > you seem to need a better reason than just "we can't do that". > I'm really not getting your point. You already quoted 2.1.1, which > pretty much says "we shouldn't do that". It says we shouldn't work against decisions made under the rules of the constitution. But "obeying the social contract" isn't a rule that's been made under the constitution in any way that I can see. If true, that means while we can follow the social contract literally if we choose, we're not obliged to do so if we choose otherwise. Folks have advocated that course of action: Thomas Bushnell and Manoj have both indicated they don't think the social contract needs to be followed so strictly as to require the release policy in question. I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss those arguments on procedural grounds, rather than looking at their merits. Cheers, aj -- Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/> Don't assume I speak for anyone but myself. GPG signed mail preferred. ``Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.''
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